Travel ocity: Ancient Mexico

Travel ocity: Ancient Mexico
To date our Mexican tours have tended to concentrate on the better known giants of ancient Mesoamerica: Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacan, but Mexico was one of the world’s major independent cradles of civilisation. The varied landscapes and environments across this vast country produced a great range of adaptations and of fascinating local cultures, the focus of this new tour.
To date our Mexican tours have tended to concentrate on the better known giants of ancient Mesoamerica: Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacan, but Mexico was one of the world’s major independent cradles of civilisation. The varied landscapes and environments across this vast country produced a great range of adaptations and of fascinating local cultures, the focus of this new tour.

Peoples with exotic names such as the Totonacs, Toltecs, the Cholulans, the Zapotecs and Mixtecs shared the same calendar systems, held certain gods and views of the cosmos in common, practiced human sacrifice and played a game with a rubber ball in a special court that was of great ritual significance. Yet they spoke a range of separate languages and produced an array of different styles in art and architecture that display a striking individuality and vivacity.

The splendid achievements of some of these local cultures of ancient Mexico are becoming better known through the archaeological work of recent years: El Tajin, for example, in the steamy hotlands of northern Veracruz, was a great city with a unique architectural style and eleven ball-courts, and Cacaxtla with superb and intriguing wall paintings, flourished in the very different temperate environment of the valley of Mexico.

At other times it was part of the Hellenistic worldWe also fly south to explore a whole new and archaeologically rich area of ancient Mexico, the marvellous upland region of Oaxaca, land of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, and still home to traditional communities of their descendants today.