The people of the Indus Valley have domesticated chickens from Indian jungle fowl, and use the water buffalo and zebu cattle as draft animals.

Indus farmers use plows, design effective irrigation systems, and construct large granaries.

They grow such plants as cotton, sesame, tea, and sugarcane.

(Different species of sugarcane likely originated in different locations, with S. barberi originating in India and S. edule and S. officinarum coming from New Guinea.)

The Soconusco region is generally divided by archaeologists into three adjacent zones along the coast—the Lower Río Naranjo region (along the Pacific coast of western Guatemala), Acapetahua, and Mazatán (both on the Pacific coast of modern-day Chiapas, Mexico).

Archaeologists coined the term Mokaya to mean "corn people" in an early form of the Mixe-Zoquean language, which the Mokaya supposedly spoke.

The Mokaya are thought to have been among the first cultures in Mesoamerica to develop a hierarchical society, which arose in the Early Formative (or Preclassic) period of Mesoamerican chronology, at a time (late second millennium BCE) slightly before similar traits are evident among the early Olmec centers of the Gulf Coast region.

The Mokaya along the Pacific coast of present-day Chiapas, Mexico are preparing beverages made from the cacao bean by at least 1500 BCE.

Southern North America (909 BCE – CE 819): Highland Kingdoms, Coastal Trade, and Agricultural Innovation

Geographic and Environmental Context

Southern North America includes Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

• The subregion encompasses the volcanic highlands of Central America, the Mexican Plateau, tropical lowlands along the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, and extensive river systems such as the Usumacinta and Grijalva.

• Coasts, highlands, and lowland jungles supported diverse and highly productive ecological zones.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Climates ranged from tropical rainforest in the lowlands to temperate conditions in highland valleys.

• Seasonal rainfall patterns, influenced by monsoons and tropical storms, dictated agricultural cycles.

• Droughts or excessive rainfall could affect maize yields, prompting shifts in settlement and subsistence strategies.

Societies and Political Developments

• This period saw the rise and flourishing of Mesoamerican civilizations, including Maya city-states in Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and southeastern Mexico, and the Zapotec and Teotihuacano cultures in central Mexico.

• Urban centers such as Teotihuacan, Tikal, and Copán became major political, religious, and economic hubs.

• Political organization ranged from centralized kingdoms to confederations of city-states, often engaged in warfare, alliance-building, and long-distance trade.

Economy and Trade

• Intensive agriculture centered on maize, beans, and squash, supplemented by cacao, cotton, and chili peppers.

• Raised fields, terracing, and irrigation systems maximized productivity in varied landscapes.

• Trade routes moved obsidian, jade, cacao, salt, ceramics, and textiles across Mesoamerica and beyond.

• Coastal communities traded marine shells, fish, and salt inland, while highland regions supplied obsidian and other minerals.

Subsistence and Technology

• Tools included polished stone implements, obsidian blades, and digging sticks.

• Architectural achievements featured monumental temples, palaces, and ball courts.

• Writing systems, such as Maya glyphs, recorded dynastic histories, rituals, and astronomical observations.

• Advanced calendrical systems coordinated agricultural and ceremonial life.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Overland trade and pilgrimage routes linked highland and lowland city-states.

• Coastal navigation connected Pacific and Caribbean settlements, facilitating interregional exchange.

• Rivers and causeways served as transport arteries within urban centers and between agricultural zones.

Belief and Symbolism

• Polytheistic religions centered on deities of maize, rain, and celestial cycles.

• Rituals included human sacrifice, bloodletting, and elaborate festivals tied to agricultural and cosmic events.

• Art and iconography depicted mythological narratives, ruling elites, and sacred animals such as the jaguar and serpent.

Adaptation and Resilience

• Diversified agricultural systems reduced dependence on any single crop.

• Political and trade alliances helped buffer against localized environmental stress.

• Urban planning integrated water management, defensive works, and ceremonial spaces to ensure societal stability.

Long-Term Significance

By CE 819, Southern North America was a center of urban civilization in the Americas, with sophisticated political systems, monumental architecture, and far-reaching trade networks that influenced cultures across Mesoamerica and beyond.

The Yanghai Tombs, a vast ancient cemetery (fifty-four thousand square miles) situated in the Turpan district of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, have revealed the twenty-seven hundred-year-old grave of a shaman.

He is thought to have belonged to the Gushi culture recorded in the area centuries later in the Hanshu, Chapter 96B.

Near the head and foot of the shaman was a large leather basket and wooden bowl filled with seven hundred and eighty-nine gram of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic and burial conditions.

An international team demonstrated that this material contained tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component of cannabis.

The cannabis was presumably employed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divination.

This is the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent.

The cache of cannabis is about twenty-seven hundred years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fiber for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The seven hundred and eighty-nine grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odor.

This shaman was Caucasoid, and was well over six feet tall.

He may belong to, or was related to the Yuezhi people or Tocharians known to have lived in the region.

The trans-Saharan gold trade is fairly small until the camel is introduced, with Mediterranean goods being found in pits as far south as northern Nigeria.

A profitable trade develops by which West Africans export gold, cotton cloth, metal ornaments, and leather goods north across the trans-Saharan trade routes, in exchange for copper, horses, salt, textiles, and beads.

Ivory, slaves, and kola nuts will later be added to the trade.

The strategic location of Kaminaljuyu—in addition to Chayal obsidian—as a nexus for trade between the Pacific coast and piedmont and the Maya Lowlands underlie Kaminaljuyu's wealth and influence throughout the Maya world.

Trade items include salt, fish, and shells from the coast, cacao and other agricultural products from the piedmont, jaguar skins, feathers, and other commodities from the Lowland jungles.

The Maya and other civilizations begin to flourish in Mexico and Central America from 250.

Farmers begin to hybridize corn to increase yields.

They cultivate beans, squash, chili peppers, and avocados, as well as tobacco and several species of cotton.

They begin to construct an extensive network of irrigation canals and create artificial gardens that float on water (such as those seen today at Xochimilco).

These cultures also practice dry farming—cultivation of non-irrigated lands by moisture-retaining tillage.

The architects of Kaminaljuyú in Guatemala copy the buildings of Teotihuacán far to the north.

During the Early Classic period in the Maya world, art and artifacts, as well as hieroglyphics, attest to specific intrusions by and influences from Teotihuacán at great Lowland cities such as Tikal, Piedras Negras, and Copán, although the exact nature of this presence remains controversial.

Teotihuacán, like the later Aztec empire, was drawn to the Southern area undoubtedly because of its rich resources of obsidian and cacao.

Teotihuacán, like the later Aztec empire, is drawn to the Southern area undoubtedly because of its rich resources of obsidian and cacao.

Art and artifacts, as well as hieroglyphics, attest to specific intrusions by and influences from Teotihuacán at great Lowland cities such as Tikal, Piedras Negras, and Copán during the Early Classic period in the Maya world, although the exact nature of this presence remains controversial.

Kaminaljuyu, a Teotihuacánese outpost in the highlands of Guatemala, is a center for economic interaction with the Maya.

Lu Yu was born in 733 in Tianmen, Hubei.

According to Tea Lore, Lu Yu was an orphan of Jinling county (now Tianmen county in Hubei province) who was adopted by a Buddhist monk of the Dragon Cloud Monastery.

He refused to take up the monastic robes and was assigned menial jobs by his stepfather.

Lu Yu ran away and joined the circus as a clown.

At age fourteen, Lu Yu was discovered by the local governor Li Qiwu who offered Lu Yu the use of his library and the opportunity to study with a teacher.

For six years, Lu Yu stayed in Houmen mountain studying under the guidance of master Zou Fuzi.

During this period Lu Yu often brewed tea for his teacher.

He also took care of fellow students' health with his remarkable knowledge in tea and herbs that he learned while at the Longgai Monastery.

Whenever time permitted between his studies Lu Yu often went to the countryside to gather tea leaves and herbs.

In one of those trips Lu Yu stumbled upon a spring underneath a six-foot round rock and the water from the spring was extremely clear and clean.

When Lu Yu brewed tea with this spring water he found the tea tasted unexpectedly better than usual: Lu Yu now realized the importance of quality water in brewing tea.

Zou Fuzi, moved by Lu Yu's obsession with tea and his skill in brewing good tea, cleared the rock together with some of his students and dug a well around the fountainhead of that spring.

(In 1768, just over a thousand years later during the Qing Dynasty (1616–1911), Jingling was hit by drought and the whole city was badly in need of water.

City folks found water still flowing from this well uncovered by Lu Yu and dug by Zou Fuzi.

A Qing official ordered three wells to be dug around the spring, and a structure constructed near the wells named "Lu Yu Hut" and the "Literary Spring".)

Concluding his studies in 752, Lu Yu bade farewell to his guru Zou Fuzi and returned to Jingling to meet his benefactor Li Qiwu.

However, Li Qiwu had been reinstated the previous year and had returned to the Tang capital Chang'an; the new Chief Official of Jingling now was Cui Goufu.

Cui, a senior official who had held a position approximating an Education Minister, had been demoted and transferred to Jingling as a Chief Official for offending a member of the royalty.

Cui Goufu is a scholar and poet well known for his magnificent five-characters-per-verse short poems.

After his demotion to Jingling, Cui Goufu took life at his leisure.

Even though Cui was many years older than Lu Yu, both men share the same interest in tea, literature and poetry.

As such, they had become good friends soon after they met.

During this period, Lu Yu had stayed with Cui Goufu and assisted him in his administrative tasks.

The pair had spent much time traveling, drinking tea and writing poems, co-authoring several books on poetry.

This period with Cui Goufu had been the growing phase for Lu Yu as a man of letters; an incubation period for him to practice and sharpen what he had learned from Zou Fuzi.

Cui Goufu, with his vast experience and skill in literary work, became a coach who provided the necessary guidance to enhance and mature Lu Yu's writing and literary skills.

During this time he writes Cha Jing (The Classic of Tea), publishing it between 760 and 780 as three books covering ten chapters.

According to Cha Jing, tea drinking is widespread.

The book describes how tea plants are grown, the leaves processed, and tea prepared as a beverage.

It also describes how tea is evaluated, and discusses where the best tea leaves are produced.