Translation:True History of the Profound Mexico/5
4. THE PRECLASSICAL OR FORMATIVE PERIOD.
The first stage of the history of ancient Mexico is known as the PRECLASSIC or formative period, and lasted approximately for six thousand years; that is, it starts in the year 6,000 B.C., and extends to about 200 BCE. This period is very long and covers the great effort made by our ancestors to pass from being nomadic hunter-gatherers, primitive savages, until they formed small villages and developed an efficient food system; an effective health system; a complex educational system; a system of social organization and a legal system. They had, moreover, a refined system of values and philosophical, ethical, moral, aesthetic and religious knowledge that allowed them to lay strong foundations over which one of the most important and ancient civilizations that remains alive to date, despite the aggression it has suffered over the past five centuries, was developed.
This valuable civilizing infrastructure that somehow remains alive and present today in contemporary Mexico and that the "imaginary Mexico"[1] of Guillermo Bonfil Batalla,[2] is reluctant to recognize, turns out to be the most important heritage bequeathed to us by the Old Grandparents of the Anahuac and is the deep foundation for all that we are today.
The relationship with nature and working with the land, especially with the milpa[3] invention, allowed the peoples of ancient Mexico to have a healthy diet. Knowledge about the human body, plants, animals and minerals was the base that allowed ancient Mexicans to enjoy incomparable good health. The development of an efficient educational system allowed the training and education of their children in order to develop a long-term civilizing process that maintained the "social purpose" for centuries, while their scientific infrastructure allowed them to start their studies of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, engineering, linguistics, architecture, botany, zoology. They learned an artistic language which enabled them to express, aesthetically and universally, their perception of the immeasurable and marvelous in human existence, and its complex and wonderful relationships with nature and the cosmos. They possessed a sophisticated and effective system of social organization that allowed them to develop monumental works that spanned several generations to complete and maintained their original purpose throughout. In short, a myriad of knowledge, which formed the foundations of what will later be known as the Classic or the flourishing period.
Agriculture.
"The agriculture —invention— was in fact a prolonged process, which took place in the region in the course of several millennia, starting at about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, according to recent dating technologies. Between 1500 and 1000 years BCE, the first permanent agricultural villages began appearing at various points of the future Mesoamerica. They domesticated over 70 local species of plants like pumpkins, corn, avocado, amaranth, beans, chili pepper, green tomato, century plants, prickly pear cactus and cotton, among others, totaling over 70 different species, in addition to others from other areas, which were all cultivated with good results (for example, tomato and gourds.)". (Teresa Rojas Rabiela. 2001).[4]
The Preclassical period represented a millenary effort from our Old Grandfathers, not only to humanize themselves, but also to humanize the world around them; because human beings, according to ancient Mexicans, are the beginning and the end of creation, and are responsible for its preservation and development towards perfection.
This philosophical element is very important in order to understand the cultures of ancient Mexico. Indeed, while other civilizations seek to dominate, exploit and transform nature, ranking themselves at the apex of universal creation; for ancient Mexicans the objective of human beings was to support the god’s creative project and to humanize the world, while considering the planet as their "beloved mother" Tonatzin.
"Man is the measure of all things," said the Greek, giving people a sort of dominion over the world; "Kill and eat", God says to man in the New Testament. Thus, the two aspects of western culture, the Hellenistic and the Judeo-Christian, allotted man, for his subsistence, dominion over everything and the authority to destroy it.
Morally, far above such concept, the ancient Mesoamerican native, as attested by their images and texts, proclaimed their own idea: man is the beginning of the world’s creation and is responsible for its surroundings. Thus is our culture constituted, of which we are exclusive heirs today.
Let us, therefore, understand its origins and accomplishments, in order to know what we are; and what we ought to become.
(Bonifaz Nuño 1992)
While it is assumed that the Old Grandparents started agricultural practices and hybridized corn in the sixth Millennium BCE, actually, the first cultural forms appeared, called Olmec by scholars, about 1500 years BCE, between the States of Tabasco and Veracruz; but indisputably, they were present in all cultures, in a phase that we shall call "olmecoid, or with an Olmec influence. In small villages all that vast and immeasurable knowledge about the universe, nature, life, death, and man before the divine and the sacred begun to be expressed.
In the approximately 4,500 years of endogenous Cultural development, from the onset of agriculture, until the formation of the Olmec culture, the Old Grandparents invented, discovered, produced, processed and systematized all that wisdom which appeared approximately 1500 years prior to the beginning of the splendor or flourishing of ancient Mexico, in the Classic period.
Foreign researchers have tried to erase these priceless 4,500 years from our ancient history by belittling it. Indeed, from the first agricultural practices until the emergence of the Mother Culture, they are barely given importance in research texts and are almost non-existent in the "official story" that is recorded from the first appearance of the Olmec culture. But the Olmecs were not created by "spontaneous generation". There were four thousand five hundred years of intense research and systematization of human life experience.
The corn invention.
The corn invention,[5] is perhaps, one of the greatest achievements of the preclassical or formative period, since from a wild grass, our Old Grandparents produced the splendid maize plant, which became the staple food of their civilization. It is important to stress that no other people in the planet made such an important discovery, because the other five civilizations, only domesticated plants that already existed in the wild.
"Agriculture accompanied the civilizing process itself, fully integrated with the rest of the cultural and social activities." The limits of its practice, as a basic activity, were also the limits of the cultural area; the presence of advanced agricultural cultures in central and southern Mexico and in Central America is no accident, given the possibility of rainy season cultivation. However, the increase of potential productivity of this rain-dependent agriculture was made possible thanks to irrigation systems and slope and other improvements on special grounds, like plant genetic amelioration of domesticated plants and those in the process of domestication, and the transformation of social organization and economic structures. In fact the various farming systems, while being ecological adaptations, in part were social, demographic and economic adaptations." (Teresa Rojas Rabiela. 2001)
The development of hydraulics for agriculture, is yet another great foundation, because it allowed a greater number of people to have energy and time available to develop major civilizing projects; to perform scientific research and to explore art, as well as to the construction of imposing buildings found in today’s "archaeological zones;" impressive material monuments, to the spiritual project of this civilization.
The “formative” era is so called because it is when the main crafts made their appearance —basketry, ceramics, weaving, metallurgy and construction— and the communal cultural patterns take form. The population grows, culture and settlements expand, there is peace, and a large cultural diffusion takes place from and amongst the civilization centers. Intensive agriculture begins; local irrigation takes place and the most important animals are domesticated.
Food production continues at subsistence levels, except for the portions destined to sustain the ruling class. But intensive agriculture begins to provide free time for the satisfaction of social needs: the production of luxury goods, construction of religious buildings, and so on." (Ángel Palerm. 1990) [6]
The Milpa invention.
The milpa was another valuable trigger for the development of the Anahuac civilization, because by planting maize, chili, squash and beans, intensively farming a very small piece of land during four months; one man could feed his family for an entire year. This is as if today, with four months of minimum-wage earnings one could survive for one year. Hydraulic engineering reached very advanced levels in Cem Anahuac, not only due to extensive irrigation, but also because the use of the "Chinampa" was a very advanced concept, even by today’s standards.
"...irrigation agriculture was the only technological way to sustain a sufficiently productive economy and to maintain a concentrated population, stable and specialized in non-agricultural work and a political organization to maintain the functioning of a productive system and good distribution. Therefore, the use of irrigation would have fostered urban life and, consequently, civilization." (Teresa Rojas Rabiela. 2001)
We definitely cannot imagine the wonders and magnificence of Teotihuacan or Monte Alban in the Classical period, without the basis of an efficient food system, which was able to support the challenges of building the various and numerous centers of knowledge that existed in our territory. Foreign researchers have not given Anahuac agriculture the place it deserves in the history of mankind.
"In fact, the conclusion that we were compelled to reach was that in pre-hispanic times farming systems had risen to levels of efficiency and productivity comparable, if not higher, to the most advanced contemporary practices. The legend of mere subsistence farming, or only capable of generating a small surplus, was destroyed". (Ángel Palerm 1990)
The Preclassical was the foundation for the development and subsequent splendor of ancient Mexico. It was almost six millennia of, forging by ourselves, one of the oldest and most important civilizations in the world, of which we are, today, undisputed legitimate heirs.
Contemporary Mexico has its deepest foundations in this formative period. Hence stems our basic diet, nature’s curative wisdom and our way of interacting with it; our unconscious relationship with education; our forms of social organization, are all deeply rooted in those nearly six thousand years of human development.
We cannot deny that this wisdom has been enriched by other peoples and cultures in a globalized world, since 1492. That we have suffered one of the most devastating cultural aggressions in mankind’s history, where the invading colonizers tried to strip us not only of our culture but also of our very condition as human beings. However, in spite of it all, the culture remains and continues to evolve. It is the vital force that guides and orients us although we cannot see or hear it, coming from the remote past. Sometimes it manifests itself in a subtle and almost invisibly, sometimes it is earth-shaking and expands from the inside out. But it is always present in our being.
- ↑ Thesis that sustains the existence of "two Méxicos". One "profound", rooted in the ancient time of the Anahuac and another "imaginary" that arises with the invasion and colonization
- ↑ Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (Mexico City 1935-1991), graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mexican Anthropologist and Ethnologist. He was Director General of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and Director General of Culturas Populares. He founded the National Museum of Popular Culture. At his death, he was serving as national coordinator of the seminar for cultural studies of the National Council for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta). For him the ethnological research was inextricably linked to the transformation of social reality.
- ↑ Milpa is a crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica. Its primary productive components are corn, beans and squash, (with the inclusion of chili on some regions). It is not simply a cornfield, as defined simplistically by dictionaries. The word milpa derives from the Nahuatl milli, that is, a planted plot of land, and bread, on top of, in. It literarily means “what is planted of top of the field.
- ↑ Rojas Rabiela, Teresa (undated): " Mesoamerican Hydraulic Systems in the New Spain Transition"; http://eh.net/XIIICongress/cd/papers/17RojasRabiela261.pdf
- ↑ Maize (Zea mays L. ssp. mays, pronounced /ˈmeɪz/), known in many English-speaking countries as corn, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. It is an annual grain-bearing plant related to grass. This plant has been greatly transformed from a grass called teozintle. This transformation has yielded a gamut of species which differ in size, which varies from two to four meters in height; in the shape and size of the cob, its color and texture etc. There is conclusive evidence from archaeological finds and Paleo-botanic studies that, in the Valley of Tehuacán, to the South of Mexico, corn was already being cultivated approximately 4,600 years ago.
- ↑ Ángel Palerm Vich was an anthropologist, Spanish professor and researcher, born in Ibiza in 1917 and died in the city of Mexico in 1980. As a result of the Spanish Civil War he moved to Mexico in 1939, after having been militant in the Catalonian anarchist syndical movement, and later embraced the Communist current. He was a professor to critical social scientists, committed to their own reality. While in Mexico, he broke with all political affiliations to devote himself to the study of Anthropology, which he had started in Barcelona. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a Bachelor's degree in history.