By Shirley Mejia
The Zocalo has served as the historical, cultural, and ceremonial center to the past and present occupants of Mexico City. It is the main square of the entire city and the center which is next to…

By Shirley Mejia
San Lorenzo Zinacantan is a municipality in the southern part of Chiapas, Mexico. The population consist of Tzotzil Maya who have ties to other highland Maya people. The name Zinacantan means “land of…

By Ana Becerra
Celebrated Mexican painter Diego Rivera transcribed the history of Mexico in a mural in his own style of painting on the main staircase of the National Palace of Mexico City. The staircase leads to…

By Shirley Mejia
The Grand Mayan World Museum which was designed by architects, Josefina Rivas Acevedo, Enrique Duarte Aznar, Ricardo Combaluzier Medina, and William Ramirez Pizarro was built in 2012. This museum…

By Eli Addams
In the midst of downtown Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, there is an Aztec site lying in ruin known as Templo Mayor. This site is home to the House of Eagles, which was a sort of barracks for the…

By Eli Addams
Templo Mayor, located in downtown Mexico City, has an adjacent museum that proudly displays artifacts and renditions of items from the Mesoamerican civilizations. The top floor of this museum contains…

By Eli Addams
In the midst of the ruins of Chichén Itzá, there is a wall covered entirely in skull carvings known as a tzompantli (or skull rack, wall of skulls, skull banner, etc.). However this is just one…

By Ana Becerra
The origins of the Maize God was born from a Mayan myth that goes back to the Classic Period of Mesoamerican history. The story of the reincarnation of the Baby Jaguar as the Maize God shows the…

By Sean Pruetz
Pulque is a mildly alcoholic beverage made from agave sap, which is then fermented until it acquires a certain level of viscosity. The tradition of making pulque is a millennia-old cultural phenomenon…

By Sean Pruetz
Amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) is an edible flowering weed that can be cultivated as a leaf vegetable and as a pseudocereal. Unlike true cereals, which are identified by botanists as a flowering grass,…

By Sean Pruetz
North of the main plaza of Izamal is the temple of Kinich Kakmó, an artifical limestone pyramid in the Yucatan dedicated to one of the area's most important and notable deities of the same name.…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
Churches and cathedrals hold much more meaning than just their well known purpose as a place of worship. The enormous size and strategic location of theses cathedrals in a colonial city made strength…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
In the heart of Mexico City, the historical site of Tlatelolco tells a portion of the history the Aztec Empire left behind. Tlatelolco is known as The Plaza of Three Cultures due to this location…

By Ashlee Ziegenbein
The Church of Santiago Tlatelolco was built as a symbol of the Spanish conquest in 1521. This was the first cathedral built during the period of the Spanish trying to establish a new-found…

By Ashleigh Richardson
Cranial Deformation, head flattening, head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is seen in ancient civilizations across the…

By Christina Wicker
Alfonso Caso started his archaeological career as a professor, and also former student, at the University of Mexico from 1918 to 1940 where his specialty was Oaxacan history and culture. From there he…

By Christina Wicker
Puuc style architecture is predominant in the Puuc region of Mexico. The style came about in the Late Classic period but continued on and advanced during the Terminal Classic period. Puuc style has…

By Travis Perez
The stadium’s construction first broke ground in 1962, and was finished in 1966, in preparation for the 1968 Olympics that were held in Mexico. The site cost 260 million pesos, and is the only stadium…

By Chloe Henze
Located 500 meters west of the Avenue of the Dead is Palacio de Tetitla. Tetitla is one of the numerous housing complexes located around the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan. Tetitla was inhibited…

By Tyler Pointer
The eyes of the world were on Mexico when they became the first country in Latin America to host the Olympics in 1968. However, beneath the surface and attention of the five rings, a much larger…

By Tyler Pointer
The Televisa Chapultepec Edificio de Servicios is a major example of the growing modernism within Mexico and the intricacy of art in Mexico City. Originally founded as Telesistema Mexicano in 1955,…

By Tyler Pointer
The Boturini Codex is an anonymously-created Aztec codex that was made between 1530 and 1541. Its second name is “Tira de la Peregrinacion” which means “The Pilgrimage Strip” and tells the story of a…

By Ashleigh Richardson
The children of the Maya came up in two different social classes. Either they were of nobility or they were commoners. Regardless of what social class three things that all children had in common was…

By Illeana Moore
Tacos Al Pastor are widely popular throughout Mexico as well as other countries, such as the United States. This dish typically consists of shaved spit-roasted pork, pineapple, onion, and cilantro all…

By Travis Perez
One of the most important Maya sites is Palenque. With its unique characteristics, it has kept some of the best quality bas reliefs in the whole Maya world, and with the work that Merle Greene…

By Illeana Moore
Throughout the various empires and cultures in ancient Mesoamerica, the act of human and animal sacrifice was a common occurrence. The Maya practiced human and animal sacrifice as well, but had more…

By Illeana Moore
The cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus, can be found on the pads of the nopal cactus. The crushed bodies, fresh or dried, make a bright red dye. Cochineal cultivation is very hard work and requires…