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Mexico were the most populous in the world at their time with great advancements in art and building .Prior to the Spanish,the Mayans developed superbly built city-states in the Yucatan and the city of Tectihuacan with a population of 200,000 in 600 A.D., made it the largest city in the world . Their Successors the Aztecs ruled over most of central Mexico .
Mexicois a mestizo society where the native population and Spanish have blended to make the country what it is today, the native peoples still make up to 30% of the population.The country has been rocked by upheavals and the loss of almost half its territory in war, foreign invasion and revolution, yet still remains a vibrant country with a unique cultural identity which started to be called mexicanidad during the Mexican Revolution . Art in prehistoric Mexico
Great Mural Rock Art , Baja Mexico . Some of the Rock Art painting in Baja date to 7,500 years ago The pre-Columbian period reaches back to the Pleistocene age when humans first appeared in Mexico and ends with the arrival of the Spanish . There appears to have been successive waves of migrants into what is now Mexico starting in 50,000 B.C. at the beginning of the Pleistocene Ice Age . When the Earth turned warmer and the Bering Straight land bridge went underwater around 8,000 B.C. the migrations out of Siberia ceased .There are rock paintings and a few carvings from this period .The pre-Columbian period reaches back to the Pleistocene age when humans first appeared in Mexico and ends with the arrival of the Spanish
carved coyote head, Tequixqual, 12,000 BC.
One of the earliest pieces of Mexican Art . A coyote head carved from a bone of an extinct llama . Found Tequixqual, near Mexico City and estimated to be about 14,000 years old. People of this time were still able to hunt large animals. As these became extinct, there was a shift to food gathering and hunting small game . There are very little traces of artistic development until the appearance of the first farming villages in the Archaic period from 5000 - 1500 BC..From 1500 - 200 B.C.Pre-Classic era, there are more elaborate settlements and pottery. Clay figurines, usually of females are found in great numbers, possibly as fertility talismans start to be fashioned .
Proto-Olmec figurines, Tlapacoya, 1300 - 800 BC.
Three eyed figure from Tlatilco, one of the earliest pre Columbian towns on western shore of Lake Texcoco , 1300 - 900 B.C.
For more information on the subsequent civilizations, click the links on the left .
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