This chapter outlines the development of the peoples and high cultures of Mesoamerica before the settlement of the Mexicas in the Valley of Mexico. It examines the main features of political and socio-economic organization and artistic and intellectual achievement during the period of Mexica pre-eminence. The chapter presents an overview of the prevailing situation in Mesoamerica on the eve of the European invasion. Excavations made in Olmec centres such as Tres Zapotes, La Venta, San Lorenzo and others have revealed great cultural transformations. Teotihuacan, the ' metropolis of the gods', is the best example of the culmination of Classic civilization in the central plateau. One of the main features of the Classic legacy was urbanism. Gold, silver, copper, tin and, probably to a lesser extent, lead, were the metals known to Mesoamericans. The administration of the markets and the establishment of standards of exchange were two important functions of the merchants.

At the time of the European invasion into South America, the southern cone presents at first sight a confusing array of different and shifting ethnic and social groups. This chapter discusses the ecological complementarity of different peoples, each in a particular environment, or establishing settlements in different niches; many of them nomadic, some transhumant, and in some cases so specialized economically that their livelihood depended on a complex and far-reaching circulation of subsistence goods. The three cultural areas of the southern cone are: southern Andean agriculturists; lowland hunter-gatherers and cultivators of the Chaco, inter-fluvial and littoral regions; and hunters, gatherers and fishers of the Pampa, Patagonia and the southern Archipelago. Among the hunting societies, the social organization of the seafarers was egalitarian. The hunting, gathering and fishing peoples of the south had no products of interest to the Europeans and they could not be enticed off their lands by the colonizers by means of economic incentives.