Geography 2020A/B Lecture Notes - Teotihuacan, Sweet Potato, Mayan Languages
31 Jan 2013
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Document Summary
When we deal with some of the cultures of mesoamerica we have to watch not to just speak about them in past terms because for example there are 23 still surviving mayan languages used by the native peoples. There is an uneven dispersal of indigenous populations that survived conquest and the highest density areas are around the andes like peru and bolivia. There are also hypothesis pointing that the people island hopped over large bodies of water or crossed with boats. As the glaciers retreated the sea levels rose and the new world was cut off for the next 12, 000 years. They lived along the coast doing small scale agriculture and fishing but some islands may have had 1 million people living in small groups. The first nations were very diverse and they were technologically sophisticated with astronomical and engineering advances (irrigation, roads, hydrological advances), and many were literate and with mathematics.
