Indigenous People Influenced Greatly The Way Latin America Developed. Among... Essay - 659 words

Indigenous people influenced greatly the way Latin America developed. Among those groups it should be pointed three main ones, such as Maya, Arawaks and Mapuche. Maya indigenous people occupied an area comprising the Yucatn peninsula and much of the present state of Chiapas, Mexico; Guatemala and Belize. By a demographic collapse at the end of 1100 the population had been lost close to 90%. Throughout Maya history, population and agriculture, correlatively, became more intensive. Linked with this process, social organization became increasingly hierarchical, with increasing differentiations of wealth and status. It was shown primarily in the differential size and elaborateness of both residences and public buildings. Settlements in civic centres showed buildings made of cut stone masonry, sculptured and stuccoed decorations, corbel-vault stone roofs, and paved plazas.


Such groupings in small, poor rural settlements involve buildings of largely perishable materials and small size. Most of the elaborate carvings, relief and full-round, and the paintings, mural and ceramic, which are the hallmarks of Classic Maya art, come from the civic centres. Small settlements were characterized by its own internal differentiation of status and power. The higher-status individuals were more probably heads of patrilineages, and that much of the religious complex was cantered on ancestor worship rather than on universal gods. By the time of Spanish conquest, most Mayan populations were cantered around small villages. Administrative centres, inhabited largely by Spaniards, were established in the 16th cent. For the most part, the Maya region was peripheral to the Spanish American colonies because the lack of mineral wealth, the relatively sparse population, and the lack of land suitable for the cultivation of export crops.


Taxes were collected through church tithes and through the encomium system. Though Maya lived relatively autonomous lives. The Arawaks were the first settled on the borderland between Bolivia, Peru and the forests between the A ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: indigenous people, latin america, ancestor worship, indigenous, maya

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