The legend of the pre-Hispanic world is still a mystery, about which much more is ignored than known.

The primitive world would take some 18,000 years to make its first major step: the Olmec civilization, born on the coast of the Gulf and extended over part of the present states of Veracruz and Tabasco. This population is estimated to have been as big as 350,000 inhabitants, with their own social and political organization and, above all, monumental cultural and artistic development. The Olmecs built a “mother” culture: from which stemmed the other cultures that flourished in the remaining regions of Meso-America (from the center of Mexico to the north of Central America), among which excelled the Teotihuacan civilization, located in the valleys of Mexico and Puebla. The Teotihuacans became the biggest urban civilization in the New World. The decadence of the Olmec civilization was long and gradual, and the reasons behind it are still unknown. The city of Teotihuacan emerged in the 200 BC and covered an area of 20 square kilometers. Contrary to the Mayas, whose sight was set on the stars, the teotihuacanese are carried away by the horizon to worship their Quetzalcoatl God in the middle of that incommensurable immensity. But Teotihuacan was invaded, plundered, burnt to ashes and wiped out, whose reasons have not been unraveled. The truth is that the extremely beautiful city fell, and so did the human structure upon which a political and economic system and a geography were built in close connection with religion, the major issue in the Mexic world. Emerging from the flourish of Teotihuacanese power, another culture developed, that of the Toltecs, who disseminated in what today is known as the State of Hidalgo and a portion of Queretaro. This was a culture of great refinement that rooted itself in the City of Tula, and spread down to what today is Central America, by the action of its gods and artists. With the extinction of the Toltecs’ supremacy, a small group, the Mexics, settled down on a little island of the Archipelago of Texcoco, where they strengthened their power 100 years later thanks to their tenacity and skills, military might and vision of the future of some of their leaders. To all this, they added their capacity to absorb the culture of those under their thumb. They founded Tenochtitlan (territory where the capital of Mexico presently rises), and turned that despised small island then into the center of a portentous city. Finally, we cannot ignore that the Mayas, that settled down to the southeastern jungles between the rivers of Chiapas and Quintana Roe. They inherited the artistic legacy of the Olmecs. They brought arts and science to their highest peaks, to later disappear leaving mystery behind. All the Southeast of the Mexican Republic remained under the shade of its center. Ceremonial centers like Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula have survived, and have become inevitable points of reference and memories. Regardless of a historical and sociological analysis of what the Spanish colonization meant, the truth is that the encounter of the two civilizations, as a result of which the pre-Cortesian way of life was almost overwhelmingly devastated, marked Mexico decisively. This did not bring, however, the extinction of the aboriginal feeling, an essential component of a national identity.

Mexico: heir of the prehispanic World

Mexican culture has a high impact all over the world. This article wants to synthesize that magnificence.