History of Honduras

Honduras was inhabited by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech (or Paya), the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico. Honduras has ruins of several cities dating from the Mesoamerican pre-classic period that show the pre-Columbian past of the country. For the arrival of the Spanish, new cities were founded such as Trujillo, Comayagua, Gracias, and Tegucigalpa. Starting in the colonial era, the territory of what is today Honduras was dedicated to harvesting, mining, and ranching. After its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, Central America would join the first Mexican Empire for a very short time, which would fall in 1823 and the Central American federation would be created, which would fall in 1839. After that, the Honduran territory has become an independent nation. CopánPre-Columbian Honduras and Yax Kuk Mo dynasty Archaeologists have demonstrated that Honduras has a multi-ethnic prehistory. An important part of that prehistory was the Mayan presence around the city of Copán in western Honduras near the Guatemalan border. Copán was a major Mayan city that began to flourish around 150 A.D. but reached its height in the Late Classic (700–850 A.D.). It has left behind many carved inscriptions and stelae. The ancient kingdom, named Xukpi or Oxwitik , existed from the 5th century to the early 9th century, and had antecedents going back to at least the 2nd century in a perido named "predinastic Copá. Other Mayan city was El puente, that ended up being conquered by Copan during the classic period, which ruins are a few kilometers from Copan. Mayan culture extended from what today are the departments of Copán, Ocotepeque, Santa Barbara, and Cortes.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (2)

History of Honduras

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present). The periodisation of Mesoamerica by researchers is based on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and modern cultural anthropology research dating to the early twentieth century.