Mokaya

Mokaya is the term used to describe pre-Olmec cultures of the Soconusco region in Mexico and parts of the Pacific coast of western Guatemala, an archaeological culture that developed a number of Mesoamerica’s earliest-known sedentary settlements. The Soconusco region is generally divided by archaeologists into three adjacent zones along the coast—the Lower Río Naranjo region (along the Pacific coast of western Guatemala), Acapetahua, and Mazatán (both on the Pacific coast of modern-day Chiapas, Mexico). The term Mokaya was coined by archaeologists to mean "corn people" in an early form of the Mixe–Zoquean language, which the Mokaya supposedly spoke.^[1] The Mokaya are thought to have been among the first cultures in Mesoamerica to develop a hierarchical society, which arose in the Early Formative (or Preclassic) period of Mesoamerican chronology , at a time (late 2nd millennium BCE) slightly before similar traits were evident among the early Olmec centers of the Gulf Coast region.

Notes

1. ^ Pool 2007

References

Clark, John E.; and Michael Blake (1996). "The Power of Prestige: Competitive Generosity and the Emergence of Rank Societies in Lowland Mesoamerica". In Robert W. Preucel and Ian Hodder (eds.). Contemporary Archaeology in Theory (4th [2004] reprinting, pbk ed.). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 258–281. ISBN 0-631-19559-9. OCLC 34243912. 

Pool, Christopher A. (2007). Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica. Cambridge World Archaeology series. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78882-3. OCLC 68965709.