Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
Maya glyphs in stucco at the Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico. An example of text in a Mesoamerican language written in an indigenous Mesoamerican writing system.
Page from Olmos' "Arte de la Lengua Mexicana", a grammar of the Nahuatl language published in 1547 three years earlier than the first Grammar of French
Detail showing glyphs from the Epi-Olmec script dating from the 2nd century CE La Mojarra Stela 1
The Olmecs were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that the Olmecs derived in part from the neighboring Mokaya or Mixe–Zoque cultures.
Olmec Head No. 3 from San Lorenzo-Tenochtitlán; 1200–900 BCE; basalt; height: 1.8 m, length: 1.28 m, width: 0.83 m; Xalapa Museum of Anthropology (Xalapa, Mexico)
El Señor de las Limas; 1000–600 BCE; greenstone; height: 55 cm; Xalapa Museum of Anthropology
The Wrestler; 1200–400 BCE; basalt; height: 66 cm, from the Arroyo Sonso area (Veracruz, Mexico); Museo Nacional de Antropología. Olmec artists are known for both monumental and miniature portrayals of what are assumed to be persons of authority-from six-ton heads sculptures to figurines.
Great pyramid in La Venta, Tabasco
