Mokaya
The Mokaya culture ( ' corn people ' in the Mixe- Zoque language ) in the region of Soconusco in the Mexican state of Chiapas and in the southwest of Guatemala is considered the oldest perhaps sedentary culture of Mesoamerica at all.
History
The Mokaya culture was only discovered in the 1970s and almost only evidence of pottery finds, which suggest a maximum age of 3700-3900 years. Thus, the findings were slightly older, or about the same time as early pottery sherds of the Olmec on the Gulf of Mexico.
Since the production of ceramic vessels is an important indicator for the settling of hunter-gatherer cultures, the research currently assumes that the first sedentary culture throughout America who lived on maize cultivation and fishing mainly. Sedentary in turn is a prerequisite for the gradual emergence of a differentiated rural social structure, and perhaps a differentiated religious consciousness. In Barra several settlements have been discovered with a size of 15-50 ha; they possessed - agronomical or defense reasons - some even on advanced small settlements.
In later times (ca. 1200-900 BC) the Mokaya culture was apparently superimposed by the Olmecs; possible would also be a mixture of the two cultures in which outweighed the Olmec culture share. In any case - mainly because of the age of the culture and the associated low number of finds - much in the dark.