Mezcala River
The Balsas River (Spanish Río Balsas, also locally known as the Mezcala River, or Atoyac River) is a major river of south-central Mexico. The basin flows through the states of Guerrero, México, Morelos, and Puebla. Downstream of Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero, it forms the border between Guerrero and Michoacán. The river flows through the Sierra Madre del Sur, and empties into the Pacific Ocean at Mangrove Point, adjacent to the city of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán. Several rapids along the course of the Balsas River limit its navigability and thus the river has been largely used for generation of hydroelectric power, flood control and irrigation. History The Balsas River valley was possibly one of the earliest maize growing sites in Mexico, dating from around 9200 years ago. Though it is known that successive communities of Yop, Coixica, Matlatzinca ( Chontal), Tlahuica and Xochimilca with Nahua succeeding in the end have lived in the region, archeological excavations in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mangrove Point
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the plate tectonics, movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of Nypa fruticans, mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are ad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mexican Plateau
The Central Mexican Plateau, also known as the Mexican Altiplano ( es, Altiplanicie Mexicana), is a large arid-to-semiarid plateau that occupies much of northern and central Mexico. Averaging above sea level, it extends from the US-Mexico border, United States border in the north to the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the south, and is bounded by the and to the west and east, respectively. A low east-west mountain range in the state of Zacatecas divides the plateau into northern and southern sections. These two sections, called the Northern Plateau () and Central Plateau (), are now generally regarded by geographers as sections of one plateau. The Mexican Plateau is mostly covered by deserts and xeric shrublands, with madrean pine-oak woodlands, pine-oak forests covering the surrounding mountain ranges and forming sky islands on some of the interior ranges. The Mexican Altiplano is one of six distinct physiographic sections of the Basin and Range Province, which in turn is part ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Amuzgo People
The Amuzgos are an indigenous people of Mexico. They primarily live in a region along the Guerrero/Oaxaca border, chiefly in and around four municipalities: Xochistlahuaca, Tlacoachistlahuaca and Ometepec in Guerrero, and San Pedro Amuzgos in Oaxaca. Their languages are similar to those of the Mixtec, and their territories overlap. They once dominated a larger area, from La Montaña down to the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca, but Mixtec expansion, rule and later Spanish colonization has pushed them into the more inaccessible mountain regions and away from the coast. The Amuzgos maintain much of their language and dress and are known for their textiles, handwoven on backstrap looms with very intricate two-dimensional designs. The Amuzgo area is very poor with an economy mostly dependent on subsistence agriculture and handcraft production. Name The Aztecs referred to them as Amoxco, the origin of the word Amuzgo. One interpretation has it meaning "place of books" probably r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tlapanec People
The Tlapanec , or Meꞌphaa, are an indigenous people of Mexico native to the state of Guerrero. The Tlapanec language is a part of the Oto-Manguean language family. The now extinct Subtiaba language of Nicaragua was a closely related language. Today Tlapanecs live primarily in the state of Guerrero a number more than 98,000. In pre-Columbian times they lived in the isolated mountain area along the Costa Chica region of Guerrero, just southeast of present-day Acapulco. Their territory was called '' Yopitzinco'' by the Aztecs who also referred to the Tlapanecs as ''Yopi''. Yopitzinco was never conquered by the Aztecs and remained an independent enclave within the Aztec empire. The main Tlapanec city was Tlapan and the name ''Tlapanec'' is the Nahuatl for "Inhabitant of Tlapan". Religion The Tlapanecs explain natural phenomena through myth, like the myth of the creation of the sun (''Akha), the moon (''Gon''') and the fire god (''Akuun mbatsuun'''), who all were born on the bank o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mixtec
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Culture was the main Mixtec civilization, which lasted from around 1500 BC until being conquered by the Spanish in 1523. The Mixtec region is generally divided into three subregions based on geography: the Mixteca Alta (Upper Mixtec or Ñuu Savi Sukun), the Mixteca Baja (Lower Mixtec or Ñuu I'ni), and the Mixteca Costa (Coastal Mixtec or Ñuu Andivi). The Alta is drier with higher elevations, while the Baja is lower in elevation, hot but dry, and the Coasta also low in elevation but much more humid and tropical. The Alta has seen the most study by archaeologists, with evidence for human settlement going back to the Archaic and Early Formative periods. The first urbanized sites emerged here. Long considered to be part of the larger Mixteca region, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nahua Peoples
The Nahuas () are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well, though in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity. Their Nahuan languages, or Nahuatl, consist of many variants, several of which are mutually unintelligible. About 1.5 million Nahuas speak Nahuatl and another million speak only Spanish. Fewer than 1,000 native speakers of Nahuatl remain in El Salvador. It is suggested that the Nahua peoples originated near Aridoamerica, in regions of the present day Mexican states of Durango and Nayarit or the Bajío region. They split off from the other Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples and migrated into central Mexico around 500 CE. The Nahua then settled in and around the Basin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Purépecha Empire
The Purépecha Empire, also known by the term Iréchikwa, was a polity in pre-Columbian Mexico. Its territory roughly covered the geographic area of the present-day Mexican state of Michoacán, as well as parts of Guanajuato, Guerrero, and Jalisco. At the time of the Spanish conquest, it was the second-largest state in Mesoamerica. The state is also known as the Tarascan Empire, an exonym often considered pejorative by the Purépecha people. The empire was founded in the early 14th century and lost its independence to the Spanish in 1530. In 1543 it officially became the governorship of Michoacán, from the Nahuatl exonym for the Purépecha Empire, ''Michhuahcān'' from ''michin'' ("fish"), -''huah'' ("possessor of"), and -''cān'' ("place of") and means "place of fishers." The Purépecha Empire was constituted of a network of tributary systems and gradually became increasingly centralized, under the control of the ruler of the empire called the Irecha or ''Cazonci''. The Purépe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nahua
The Nahuas () are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well, though in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity. Their Nahuan languages, or Nahuatl, consist of many variants, several of which are mutually unintelligible. About 1.5 million Nahuas speak Nahuatl and another million speak only Spanish. Fewer than 1,000 native speakers of Nahuatl remain in El Salvador. It is suggested that the Nahua peoples originated near Aridoamerica, in regions of the present day Mexican states of Durango and Nayarit or the Bajío region. They split off from the other Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples and migrated into central Mexico around 500 CE. The Nahua then settled in and around the Basin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |