Mesoamerican

American  

[me-zoh-uh-mer-i-kuhn, mee-] / ˌmɛ zoʊ əˈmɛr ɪ kən, ˌmi- /

adjective

1. Archaeology. of or relating to the area extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, in which diverse pre-Columbian civilizations flourished.

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noun

1. a person belonging to any of the pre-Columbian civilizations that flourished in the area extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua.

Example Sentences

A professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas at Austin, Mr. Stuart compares the challenges of 19th-century Mayanists and Egyptologists.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026

There are decorative patterns at the archway entrance of the library that were modeled after Labna, a Mesoamerican archaeological site that’s known as a portal.

From Los Angeles Times • May 15, 2025

The scent of copal, a tree resin used by Mesoamerican cultures for spiritual, medicinal and practical rituals, wafts through the space.

From Salon • Oct. 13, 2024

Like virtually every other Mesoamerican society, the inhabitants of the Huasteca played what is simply known today as “the ballgame,” in the time before the Spanish conquest.

From New York Times • Apr. 26, 2024

So widespread was Olmec iconography—jaguar babies, carved stelae, distinctively shaped ceramics—that many archaeologists believed its very ubiquity was evidence that the Olmec “not only engendered Mesoamerica but also brought forth the first Mesoamerican empire.”

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann