In the middle of everything

Afro-Eurasia, home to the Silk Road, often gets all the attention when we discuss ancient trade networks. The Silk Road connected Europe with South and East Asia. But there was plenty of trade going on in the ancient Americas before 1500 A.D., too. When looking for evidence of long-distance trade networks in the Americas, the best place to start is Mesoamerica (today’s Mexico and Central America). As the “Meso” part of its name indicates, it stood in the middle of everything.

Until recent decades, scholars assumed that long-distance trade in the Americas was pretty limited. For example, many believed that the Maya economy was controlled by the ruling class. Historians assumed that this control prevented the development of large markets and a merchant class. They also assumed that the Inca in South America had a centrally planned economy with very little commercial activity. Other societies, like those in the Southwestern U.S., the Caribbean, and the Mississippi River valley, were also assumed to have few long-distance linkages.

There were good reasons to think this way. The Americas, in general, weren’t exactly trade-friendly. Mesoamerican societies did not develop sailing technology, and most Mesoamerican societies developed inland, away from seaports. The Americas had few pack animals to carry goods and hardly any navigable rivers. Most merchants had to carry goods themselves, on their backs. Archeologist Kenneth Hirth claims that “Mesoamerica had the worst transportation system in the ancient world.” Still, Hirth notes, Mesoamerica developed active long-distance exchange networks and huge markets. All societies in the Americas participated in some level of trade. The big question: How extensive were the connections formed by trade? One way to answer this is by comparing two Mesoamerican cities, separated by 25 miles – and by 1,000 years: Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlán.

Teotihuacan

In the fifth and sixth centuries CE, Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the world, home to as many as 200,000 people. During the Classic Period of Mesoamerica (100 – 650 CE), this was the most powerful and most important city in Mesoamerica. It held the largest market of the Classic Period, the center of regional trade networks extending through Mesoamerica and possibly beyond.

Teotihuacan was an important market center and trading power because of obsidian—a natural glass formed by the cooling of volcanic lava. Since metal-working was rare in Mesoamerica, obsidian was the best option for weapons and other sharp tools… if you could get it. Like iron and copper in Afro-Eurasia, Mesoamerican societies that had reliable access to obsidian had a distinct advantage.

The rulers of Teotihuacan monopolized the region’s obsidian. Merchants from Teotihuacan traveled across Mesoamerica and beyond, trading obsidian and bringing back luxury goods. Archeological evidence suggests that Teotihuacan’s trade networks reached from today’s Southwestern U.S. to Panama. However, its strongest trade was with the Maya city-states (now Mexico). Teotihuacan and the Maya exchanged goods, ideas, and people in times of war and peace. Maya merchants traveled the coast in huge canoes, carrying jade, cacao, honey, and feathers, among other luxury items.

Long-distance trade was limited to lighter, high-value luxury goods that were easy for merchants to carry. But staples like salt, grains, cotton, lime, and ceramics moved shorter distances along the same routes. Short-distance trade moved food between different climate zones, helping protect societies from sudden natural disasters like drought. These shorter trade routes probably developed first and laid the foundations for truly long-distance networks during the Classic Period.

You might have noticed we said probably. We don’t have many written sources from Mesoamerican societies. Some societies, like Teotihuacan, left us no records. Many written records from other societies, like the Maya, were burned by Spanish colonizers centuries later. We have some oral histories that the Spanish recorded from the people they conquered. To make matters worse, merchants weren’t part of the ruling class, so we don’t know as much about them. This is probably why, for so long, scholars assumed that the Maya and Inca never really had a complex commercial economy—the available sources all focus on the lives of the rulers. Scholars studying this region have had to rely on murals of market scenes and archeological evidence to understand the lives of merchants.

Tenochtitlán

Just 25 miles south of Teotihuacan sits the capital of the Aztec Empire—Tenochtitlán. Well, it used to be Tenochtitlán. Today, it’s Mexico City, itself a center of global trade and home to almost 21 million people. But beneath the concrete of this modern city lie the ruins of Tenochtitlán. Almost 1,000 years after the collapse of Teotihuacan, the huge markets of the Aztec empire dominated trade in Mesoamerica.

After Teotihuacan collapsed around 550 CE, other societies rebuilt regional trade networks. By the fifteenth century, the Aztec Empire controlled extensive trade routes across most of Mesoamerica. The Aztec Empire was formed by an alliance among three powerful city-states in the early fifteenth century. The empire’s capital city, Tenochtitlán, sat on a lake. Its huge markets, straight streets, and monumental architecture contained over 200,000 people—larger than London, Paris, or Madrid at the time. The nearby market of Tlatelolco was visited by tens of thousands of people daily.

Trade was central to life in the Aztec Empire. Their pantheon—the group of gods they worshipped—had a god of commerce, named Yacatecuhtli, who protected faithful merchants and travelers. Aztec merchants were called pochteca and they traveled all over Mesoamerica, carrying their goods on their backs. Pochteca also carried information. They acted as spies for the empire, gathering information about rivals, which the Aztecs used for military expansion.

We know a bit more about the Aztec merchant class than we know about Teotihuacan or Maya merchants. We have more sources from the Aztecs and the Spanish colonizers. The pochteca formed their distinct social class and developed a complex hierarchy, or ranking system, from minor merchants who sold goods at local markets that they made at home to incredibly wealthy individuals who employed dozens of minor merchants to carry luxury goods beyond the border of the empire. Like merchants in Europe and China, many pochteca were forced to hide their wealth to avoid angering the nobles.

Long-distance networks in the Americas

Other regions of the Americas also had long-distance trade. Extensive road systems linked societies in the Andes Mountains, today’s Southwestern U.S., and in the Maya lowlands. Llama caravans traveled the Inca highlands to the Pacific coast. In the Mississippi River valley, trade networks stretched from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Caribbean societies traded with communities in South America.

The Puebloan peoples in today’s Southwestern U.S. traded turquoise across a vast network stretching from California to Colorado to Northern Mexico. Puebloan turquoise has been found in Aztec sites, and Aztec cacao and feathers have been found in the American Southwest. This is all evidence of long-distance trade. The two societies were separated by 1,200 miles—about the same distance as that between Rome and Egypt.

Technologies moved along with goods. Agricultural methods for farming maize might have traveled to North and South America from Mesoamerica along trade routes. South American metal-working technology probably arrived in Mesoamerica along the same routes in the opposite direction.

Probably. Yes, there’s that word again. Much of our historical knowledge about trade in the Americas before 1500 CE is based on educated guesses and incomplete evidence.

We know that trade within Mesoamerica was common, complex, and widespread. We know the same for the Andean highlands in South America, the Caribbean Islands, the Southwestern U.S., and the Mississippian societies. What scholars continue to debate is how interconnected these different regions were with each other. Were Mississippian merchants connected to Aztec markets by way of Caribbean canoes? Was the Inca economy tied to the western coast of Mexico by routes along the Pacific coast? Did Amazonian people get any trade goods from the Caribbean islands?

Maybe.

The lack of sources limits our knowledge, but not our curiosity. Archeologists and Anthropologists at Teotihuacan and other sites across the Americas have only begun to trace the paths of exchange before 1500. The debates will continue as discoveries are made and new connections revealed.