William M. Ferguson, Arthur H. Rohn.
Mesoamerica's Ancient Cities: aerial views of Precolumbian ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.
University Press of Colorado. 1990
“Mesoamerica” describes a cultural area that extended in Precolumbian times from north of the Valley of Mexico southeastward to Honduras in Central America. The ruins displayed in this volume are organized geographically into nine regions: Central Mexico, Valley of Oaxaca, Lowland Maya (Tikal, Quiriguá, Copán), Belize, Chiapas, Guatemala Highlands, Río Bec, Puuc, and Northern Yucatán. Maps of each region are included in addition to schematic drawings showing the principal structures of the various sites—temples, pyramids, ballcourts, palaces, and others.
Over a span of three thousand years between 1500 B.C. and A.D. 1500, great Indian civilizations flourished, waned, and died in Mesoamerica, including the Olmec, Teotihuacán, Maya, Toltec, Zapotec, and Aztec. The Aztec civilization was violently and deliberately destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors in the middle 1500s. All of these indigenous cultures of Mexico and Central America are brought to life in Mesoamerica’s Ancient Cities; they are no longer lost or mysterious. As this volume reveals, we know where they lived, who many of their kings were as well as the gods they worshipped, and why their civilizations ended. Authors Ferguson, Rohn, and Royce include the most recent research and most widely accepted theoretical perspectives on Mesoamerican civilizations. This book makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the Americas.