The Preclassic Mesoamerican Period

The Preclassic Mesoamerican Period, also called the Formative Period, roughly 2000 BCE to 250 CE, is the first of the three broad chronological divisions, alongside the Classic and Postclassic, that archaeologists use to organize the whole of ancient Mesoamerican history, and covers the transition from early settled farming villages to the region's first genuinely complex societies. The period's early and middle centuries saw the rise of the Olmec civilization on the Gulf Coast, generally credited as Mesoamerica's founding civilization, while its later centuries saw the growth of major population centers and early monumental construction well beyond Olmec territory, including the emergence of the huge site of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico and the earliest large lowland Maya centers with substantial pyramid architecture, such as El Mirador in the Guatemalan lowlands, which briefly rivaled or exceeded the scale of any Classic-period Maya city that followed it. The period also saw the spread of the Mesoamerican ballgame, the earliest development of writing and calendrical systems, and the establishment of the maize-based agricultural economy that would sustain every later Mesoamerican civilization. It gives way to the Classic Period around 250 CE as the Maya lowlands and central Mexico entered their own respective high points.