Mesoamerica
The word comes from Greek mesos, which translated into English means "intermediate." The term designated this region is relatively young American is owed to Paul Kirchhoff, who in 1943 began to call this way. Geographically, it covers the southern half of Mexico, the territories of Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize and western Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Mesoamerican area is bounded on the north by the rivers Lerma and Sinaloa (Mexico) south of the Ulua River in the Gulf of Honduras and Costa Rica Punta Arenas, on the east by the Gulf of Mexico and west by the Pacific Ocean . The territory has an approximate area of \u200b\u200b1,000,000 sq km, which collects a huge geographical diversity, from desert to lush tropical forests and from alpine areas to coastal plains.
Mesoamerica
But the concept is not a purely geographical definition, but this is a cultural superárea where its borders were not static, but came and went, contracted and expanded in the course of events or historical . This dynamic was most disturbed by the northern border, known as the Great Chichimeca or Oasis of America, not so by the South where it seems that cultural boundaries were more static.
The enormous development that forged the indigenous civilizations were in a mosaic of ethnic and linguistic diversity. One after another followed by a series of cultures with a lot of common features that coexisted in the same area, although not always in harmony. The rich cultural diversity with its various features are spread across the different states characterized each culture and its inhabitants. These features of the cultural unity of the Mesoamerican peoples Paul Kirchhoff defined them as "the Mesoamerican complex, which once served to differentiate neighboring indigenous peoples of North and South. A definition of what is collected is not always well accepted, where discussions often erupt and dissenting voices in disagreement with these common features. However, almost always end up accepting commonalities that underlie all cultures superárea. Like it or not, the fact is that the different cultures of Mesoamerica share some common features, ranging from the use of two calendars (one 260-day ritual calendar and a 365), human sacrifice the cemeteries and pyramids as part of religious expression, slavery or the taking of captives, the crops of the Trinity agriculture (corn, beans and squash) and cultural significance around corn lithic technology and the absence of metallurgy, the social system based on the prestige, the cocoa as currency for commercial use and practice of the ball game between others.
In all, there seems to be stressed the importance of the mother culture, the Olmec, in order to understand the development of all how many succeeded and thus highlight or underline the recognition of each , including the largest, Mayan and Aztec. The glorious past of these cultures can always be found in history and archeology, in addition to their traditions to arrive today with all his energy. If any of these major cultures as the Olmec, Aztec, Maya, Toltec, or some more left the evidence of his brilliance in the form of buildings and stone sculptures, most of the Mesoamerican peoples left no more than oral tradition passed from generation generation, which is why the importance of preserving these traditions and keep them in use as part of a historical legacy, that after all is the foundation, the root, and the sense of Mesoamerican society today. Despite the emergence of European culture, English to a greater extent, in the cultural scene Amerindian or indigenous Mesoamerica has widely been progressing over time, merging, syncretic, where every town has had its progress in its political, economic and trade, contributing to the growth of each culture, each society, keeping most of the time their own characteristics, which in the general area are part of a common cultural reality today.
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