Similarities Between Olmecs And Mayans

The people of early Mesoamerica had an abundance of different foods. One main food they had though in the 3 main groups (Aztecs, Olmecs, and Mayans) was maize. Maize is a corn like plant derived from teosinte that was domesticated around seven thousand B.C. to five thousand B.C.. Maize was about seventy percent of the Mesoamerican diet and around twenty one percent was meat . The Olmec’s had corn, beans, squash, and chili peppers (194). Each of their food items went in to a balanced diet of carbs, minerals, and vitamins. According to Concise Thematic Analysis “The Olmec system produced a food surplus that freed members of the community to take on specialized roles” (194) which just goes to show how much was around for them. Mayans ate corn and beans as their most important part of their diets, but also had some small domestic meats such as dog, turkey, duck, and fish. The Mayans also had honey and alcoholic drinks made from a stingless bee. The Aztecs had a good variety of plant foods as well with maize topping the charts of their diet with having other stable foods such as sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans chilies, squashes (also big in their diet), carrots, etc. They also, had a lot of animals to choose from but they did not

The main draw back was that the agriculture that they had was so simplistic it relied on tools that should have been tossed out and upgraded for new ones I am speaking of the new stone age technology and had no large animals to push their agriculture further. But without those tools and animals it lead to them having to think of new was to work with what they had and would lead to no one going hungry in their villages. In the center of Mexico around 25.3 million lived there which is more than most cities today with ”better methods”. So their agriculture let the grow in population and sustain