Introduction

The Spanish explorers and conquistadors who first made contact with the Mesoamerican world were surprised by its complexity and grandeur, for they had become accustomed to the simpler ways of the previously subjugated natives of the Caribbean Islands. Their testimony constitutes an informative beginning place for our study of the Mesoamerican world, whose origins, conditions at European contact, and transformations resulting from colonization and (more recently) modernization are the subject of this text.