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

“One of the things that you see in ancient Mesoamerican and Mayan mythology is that they’re always twins,” he explains.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 28, 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

The six-foot woman, carved in pale stone, wears a peaked headdress, circular earrings and the wide hip belt and kneepads of an ancient Mesoamerican athlete.

From New York Times • Apr. 26, 2024

This supervision, recorded on a stela erected seventy years afterward, is the first known example in Yucatan of a Mesoamerican specialty: the chaperoned coronation.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann