The Popol Vuh, the Mythic and Heroic Sagas of the Kichés of Central America, pp. 213-271

The history of Native Americans in the Americas commenced tens of thousands of years ago with the settlement by the Paleo-Indians. A wide variety of cultures existed during this era, and subsequent contacts with Europeans had profound impacts on their history. In the United States, the Archaic period lasted until 1000 BC, including a major culture of Mound builders, whose territory stretched from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The Post-Archaic stage includes the Formative, Classic and Post-Classic stages. From the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th through 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans in North America declined through: epidemic diseases, violence and warfare at the hands of explorers and colonists, displacement from ancestoral lands, and internal warfare. In Central America the key civilizations were the Aztec and Mayan Empires. The Aztec Empire began as an alliance of three Nahua altepetl city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, which ruled the area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the Spanish conquistadores under Hernán Cortés defeated them (1521). The Maya Mesoamerican civilization was noted for its hieroglyphic script, as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. In South America, the Norte Chico civilization in Peru is the oldest civilization in the Americas and while development was interrupted by Portuguese and Spanish colonization, and a demographic collapse ensued, the continent's mestizo and indigenous cultures remain distinct from those of the colonizers. This was one of the first six independent civilizations in the world, being contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids.

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