Pyramids:The Americas

Pyramids (The Americas)

Large structures with four stepped sides and a flat top, built in Mexico and Central and South America from about 3000 BC to about AD 1500. The Americas were only one area of the world in which people built pyramids. For information on the pyramids of Egypt, see Pyramids (Egypt). For information on the pyramids of Mesopotamia, see Ziggurat.

Some American pyramids served as royal tombs, while others were built for military defense and as platforms for temples and palaces. Most were constructed between about 1200 BC and the AD 700s, and construction continued until the Spanish conquest of Central and South America in the 1500s. After that, native civilizations in the region declined. Most of the pyramids that survive today are in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and Peru.

Several groups of peoples—including the Olmec, Moche, Teotihuacanos, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec—built pyramids in the Americas. Their societies centered on great religious complexes, which sometimes constituted cities. Within these complexes, the pyramids were the dominant structures. In the biggest cities—such as Copán in Honduras, Chichén Itzá and Teotihuacán in Mexico, and Quiriguá and Tikal in Guatemala—vast complexes of pyramids were built around courts or plazas. In Copán, Quiriguá, and other sites, the builders put up huge artificial hills on which they constructed terraces, sunken courts, and pyramids.

The pyramids of the Americas generally are not as tall as those of Egypt, but a few extend over a larger area. For example, the Grand Pyramid at Cholula in central Mexico is 62 m (203 ft) tall, and its base covers about 16 hectares (40 acres). The base is about three times the area covered by the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. And more pyramids were built in the Americas than in Egypt. About 90 pyramids are known to have existed in Egypt, whereas several hundred small pyramids are scattered across Central and South America.

Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, the American pyramids rarely contain inner chambers or burial vaults. Often, the interior is simply a mound of rubble. But their exterior construction is much more complex. They generally have terraces, and most were originally faced with cut white limestone set in lime mortar. A temple sat atop most American pyramids. This temple tended to be a small windowless room of stone or adobe. A broad stairway led up the front of the pyramid to the temple. Scholars believe that only priests climbed the temple stairways, and that during religious ceremonies at the temple, crowds of onlookers assembled in the plaza below. In some cultures, the temple was the site of sacrificial rites, after which the victim's body was flung down the stairway.

Terraced stone pyramids were built in Peru as early as 3000 BC in the Norte Chico region. Later cultures in Peru constructed even larger pyramids, including a complex at Las Haldas dated to 1800 BC. The Olmec built the first large-scale pyramid complex in 1200 BC at La Venta in southeastern Mexico. Pyramid building stopped after Spanish conquistadors(conquerors) arrived in Central and South America in the AD 1500s. The most famous surviving pyramids of the Americas include the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán, and the Huaca del Sol in Moche, Peru.

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