Early Civilizations of the Americas

Long before Europeans arrived, people in the Americas built cities, pyramids, roads, and calendars. Some of these civilizations lasted for centuries. Others grew into great empires. And the descendants of many of these peoples still live in the Americas today.

As you read, look for three things in each civilization: what people ate, what they built and invented, and who carries on their story today.

Printable comparison chart (PDF)

Timeline

The bars show when each civilization was at its height. The peoples themselves did not end there.

Mexico and Central America

The Olmec

The Olmec built one of the earliest civilizations in the Americas along the hot, rainy Gulf Coast of Mexico. They are famous for giant stone heads carved from volcanic rock. Seventeen have been found, and the largest are taller than a grown-up and weigh many tons. Many of the heads wear helmets that may have been used in an early ballgame.

The Maya

Maya city-states in the rainforests and on the Yucatán Peninsula had stone temples, palaces, and ball courts. Maya scholars wrote books, tracked the movements of the sun, moon, and planets, and used a number system that included zero. Many southern cities were abandoned around A.D. 900, but northern cities continued, and the last Maya kingdom did not fall to Spain until 1697.

The Aztecs (Mexica)

The Mexica, often called the Aztecs, built their capital, Tenochtitlan, on an island in Lake Texcoco in 1325. Raised roads called causeways connected the city to the shore, and farmers grew food on chinampas, gardens built up from the lake bottom. By 1500, Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world. In 1521, Spanish soldiers and their Indigenous allies captured it.

South America

The Inca

From their capital, Cusco, the Inca built the largest empire in the Americas, stretching about 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains. Thousands of miles of stone roads and rope bridges tied the empire together. Farmers cut terraces into steep mountainsides, and officials kept records on quipus, cords tied with knots. Spanish conquerors captured the Inca ruler in 1532, though Inca resistance continued for forty more years.

North America

Ancestral Puebloans

The ancestors of today’s Pueblo people built great houses with hundreds of rooms at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado. Chaco was the center of roads and trade routes that brought shells, copper bells, and macaw feathers from Mexico. Older books use the name “Anasazi,” but Pueblo people prefer “Ancestral Puebloans.”

Mound-Building Cultures: Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian

Over many centuries, peoples in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys built huge earthworks, some shaped like hills and others like circles, squares, or animals. The Hopewell traded copper from the Great Lakes and shells from the Gulf of Mexico. Around A.D. 1100, about 10,000 to 20,000 people lived at Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis. It was the largest city north of Mexico.

Myth or Fact?

Compare the Civilizations

Think About It

1. Which foods appear in almost every civilization? Why do you think they were so important?
2. Choose two civilizations. How were their buildings alike? How were they different?
3. Why is it important to know that these peoples’ descendants still live today?

Early Civilizations Quiz

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