Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mesoamerica

Discussion archives
One of the important concepts that should be emphasized, which the Smithsonian does a great job, is changing the framing of our history from "European conquest" to "European invasion". The small pox epidemic was a critical component of Spaniard colonization. "Conquest" mistakenly suggests the colonization took place purely due to military strategy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.35.158 (talk) 23:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Mesoamerica students
In this semester I will be teaching a course in Mesoamerican culture and History at the University of Copenhagen and I am going to combine this with having my students improving some selected articles as part of their assignments. I am thinking of working on Mesoamerica, Zapotec civilization, Mixtec civilization, Mesoamerican religion and Mesoamerican calendars and possibly Aztec. So please be kind and helpful to my students who will probably have some beginners problems finding the right formatting and writing styles. If any problems or disputes should arise as a result of this I will be more than ready to help out.·Maunus· ƛ · 10:20, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey Maunus, fantastic, sounds good (& congrats on the position, btw!) Sure, we'll do all we can to help 'em out, articles on zapotec & mixtec would particularly benefit, but any of them would be great. With the prior examples of Hoopes' KU student exercises before us, it should not be a prob at all. Maybe if you set up a subpg somewhere & list out the usernames once you're starting, we can help look out for them. Feel free to use this talkpg as a common/coordination ground if you want, up to you of course. Look forward to it, saludos! --cjllw ʘ  TALK 03:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Mokaya culture
Hello. I found a page, User:Swargin, which contains information about the Mokaya culture, a supposed culture which developed in mesoamerica before the Olmec civilization. Is it true information or false? Should it be moved to the mainspace if it's true? JuanJose (talk) 14:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi JuanJose. I've answered your query that you left on my talkpage. At a glance (and brief search) it looks genuine. I would be uncomfortable about lifting something out of userspace without the user's permission. User:Swargin only made one contribution and that page was it, all in one go, so it could even be copied word for word from a copyrighted source. The user does have their email active, so the best option would be to drop them an email and see if they reply (but don't hold your breath). Best regards, Simon Burchell (talk) 15:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I am creating an article for Mokaya as it is clearly missing.·Maunus· ƛ · 16:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Cultures and Archaeological Sites
For the last couple of years I have been working on a personal research project, identifying cultures and archaeological sites for the entire continent, have over 800 articles, and my aim is to translate all, to offer the same information in both languages. That is not the case today. Also I have found many sites are not available in Wikipedia at all; some only in English and others in Spanish.

I would be happy to participate on the project and help on any way I can, also, could use some help in digesting the information and make it fit for Wikipedia. I am somewhat new here, and getting help could expedite uploading the information I have.

Can use some help in segregating the articles, between regions, cultures, location, religions, languages, etc.

Raúl Gutiérrez (talk) 14:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the offer - any help with WikiProject Mesoamerica is always welcome, just remember to cite your sources. If you have any specific queries, please contact me at my talk page. I am active on both English and Spanish wikipedias, but you're much more likely to get a rapid reply on my English talkpage. Best regards, Simon Burchell (talk) 21:05, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

New source
Biblioteca Digital Mexicana is born.

El Comandante (talk) 15:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Nice! Simon Burchell (talk) 16:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

New mayanist source : PARI n°2
Hi,

The number 2 of the PARI Journal has been published.

El Comandante (talk) 22:08, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Copán lords getting drunk! Excellent stuff! Simon Burchell (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

2 new sources on animals in prehispanic America
Hi,
 * 1) site of the Templo Mayor museum : Simbolismo de los animales prehispánicos ;
 * 2) blog ArKeopatías : Los animales en el mundo prehispánico. Una perspectiva desde la Semiótica de la Cultura.

El Comandante (talk) 20:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Updating the article watchlist
Does anyone know how to update the Mesoamerica article list so the changes appear on the project watchlist? CJ is not around so much these days and always used to do this. New Mesoamerica articles are no longer showing up on the watchlists, even though they have been tagged with the project banner. Simon Burchell (talk) 11:37, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Copyvios
has contributed several articles about interesting Mesoamerican sites and topics over the past few months. Unfortunately in all of the cases I have thus far reviewed he has done so by translating diretly from thirdhand, copyrighted websites (to which he luckily refers as sources for the statements so that they are easily identifiable). I have had to remove most of the material at the articles El Cerrito (archaeological site), Las Flores (archaeological site), Ometepe and I have only just started looking through his contributions. It is a real shame - since many of these topics are obviously notable and would make great articles if someone took the time to actually write them instead of just copying it into google translate directly from the source website. I am going to need help looking through his numerous contributions and if someone has time to salvage some of the articles he has created instead of just removing the copyvio's that would be excellent - I don't have that time myself. This topic came to my attention because apparently Gumr51 had similar problems at the Spanish wiki but decided to leave and join us instead of helping the administrators over there clean up his mess - luckily an ES-wiki admin notified me that the same problems seemed to be occurring here, I checked it and he was right. ·Maunus· ƛ · 02:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

"American Indians"
See Talk:Native Americans in the United States where it is to be renamed to a term that uses "American Indian" without any mention of the United States. As "American Indian" has been used to describe aboriginal peoples of the Americas in the past, this might be of interest to you. 65.93.15.213 (talk) 05:27, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Ceramics of indigenous peoples of the Americas
Would anyone here care to provide a brief overview of Mesoamerican pottery/ceramics for Ceramics of indigenous peoples of the Americas? The section definitely needs a re-write and it would be great to have someone specifically knowledgeable about Mesoamerican cultures to write it. Cheers, -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Ancient Civilizations Textbook
Hello all! I’m working with the Saylor foundation to create a series of original, crowd-sourced textbooks that will be openly licensed and freely available on the web and within Saylor’s free, self-paced courses at Saylor.org. We are using Wikibooks as a platform to host this project and hope to garner the interest of existing members of the Wikibooks and Wikipedia community, as well as bring in new members! We thought that some of your members may be interested in contributing to our book Saylor.org's Ancient Civilizations of the World. (talk)--Thomas Simpson (talk) 15:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

La Ciudad Blanca
I request that WikiProject Mesoamerica editors monitor the article La Ciudad Blanca for appropriate content. Although this is about a semi-legendary place in eastern Honduras, east of the traditional boundary of Mesoamerica and part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, folklore and scientific interpretations have frequently identified Ciudad Blanca as being Mesoamerican in character. The article cites Toltec and Aztec mythology, including stories of Quetzalcoatl and makes comparisons between recent data and that from Copán and Caracol. Chris Fisher, the archaeologist for a current project researching Ciudad Blanca, is a Mesoamericanist. Hoopes (talk) 19:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Horrible Histories
Hi. We're having a discussion on the fate of Horrible Histories TV show at: Horrible Histories (2009 TV series). As a relevant Wikiproject, we would greatly appreciate it if you would voice your opinion on the talk page, or to have a crack at editing and improving it. Thankyou for your time. :)--Coin945 (talk) 13:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Americas
FYI, there's a proposal to create a western hemisphere coordinating project above NA/SA/etc. See WikiProject Council/Proposals/Americas -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:47, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

FAR notification
I have nominated Sylvanus Morley for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 19:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Mayan caves in the Yucatan ( seeking additional information for this article)
Hello ! I have a question about Maya archeology. In the mid- 90s. I watched an interesting TV show. In it a group of people studied karst system in the Yucatan. At the deepest and furthest from the surface of the cave they found a small, stuffy stones input ( such as having the right kind of masonry ), allegedly leading to the lower world (or sanctuary) Maya. This entry allegedly walled Mayan priests to keep out strangers in a holy place (like Spanish ) when they invaded their land. Log in to open did not. In this TV show is over. For information about entering I have never found. If you know, please tell me : what was this cave , and where in fact this is the input? Thank you in advance. text in Russian - http://www.mezoamerica.ru/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2131. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 11:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Removing Jacobs from WikiProject Mesoamerica Citations
WP:MESO/CITEJ lists five self-published articles about Mesoamerican/Paleoamerican topics on jqjacobs.net by James Q. Jacobs, an adjunct professor with a BA in Anthropology who teaches introductory computer classes at Mesa Community College and Central Arizona College. He coauthored two microbiology articles on hallucinogenic mushrooms in reputable peer-reviewed journals (here and here). I've found no other independently published works. A minor dispute arose in Maya calendar, as I tried removing a citation to one of his self-published works based on the rules of WP:USERGENERATED and WP:SPS. Excerpt from [[WP:USERGENERATED]:


 * “Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable. ... Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications.”

Another editor disputed removing the citation because (1) Jacobs' article is included in WP:MESO/CITEJ, and (2) other reliable sources have cited his articles (1 2 3 books from academic authors or publishers are given as examples).

The articles themselves are well-written, and I'm not disputing their content. However, Wikipedia's guidelines seem opposed to treating self-published sources like this as reliable sources, unless evidence emerges that Jacobs is a established expert, independently published in the field. Some 60 or 70 other Wikipedia articles also cite jqjacobs.net. I'm proposing to remove the five articles from WP:MESO/CITEJ. From what I can tell, no citation has been deleted from the Mesoamerica Citations in its eight year history, and the main editor abandoned the lists in 2010. I figured I'd ask here rather than WP:BEBOLD. Thoughts?

Agyle (talk) 13:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and made the change, with an edit summary pointing back here if anyone questions or contests the removal. Agyle (talk) 04:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merger of 4th century in Guatemala category
Please see Categories for discussion where the 4th century in Guatemala category is being proposed for merging into a parent category. Any discussion welcome, Simon Burchell (talk) 11:02, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

w:es:Wikiproyecto:Wikimedia en langues régionales de España
I invite to participate. And create table for wikipedia of Hispanoamérica.--Kaiyr (talk) 12:13, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello! I live in Denmark - the city of Copenhagen. I liked your forum. Razrishite to attach to it and communicate! Good wind and success! Richard Malcolm.

Spanish conquest of the Maya Good Topic nom
Hi all,

I have recently nominated Spanish conquest of the Maya for Good Topic, and would welcome any reviews or comments. Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 10:59, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Ahuiateteo
If anyone could look over this article, I'd be grateful. It's been tagged for notability for years, but it needs someone who knows the topic. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 19:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I just looked this up - they are minor deities, but the group as a whole gets an entry in An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya by Mary Miller and Karl Taube, which is a solid source. They are not mentioned in Dioses Prehispánicos de México by Adela Fernández, which is generally pretty good. So I would guess, a minor group of minor deities, and it may be that they are simply aspects of other deities. Miller and Taube mention that they appear in two Mexican codices. It does look like there are some decent hits as JSTOR, for example Themes of Drunkenness, Violence, and Factionalism in Tlaxcalan Altar Paintings by John Phol . So, in summary, I would say probably notable enough for an article. Simon Burchell (talk) 19:41, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Heliacal rising of Venus
If any of you will be in Central America on August 18, 2015 you should climb to the top a Mayan temple before sunrise and see if you can observe the heliacal rising of Venus in the glow of the rising sun. The temple of the diving god at Tulum would be ideal. Senor Cuete (talk) 22:31, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Indian reservations
Does Guatemala, Honduras, French Guiana, Suriname, El Salvador has Indian reservations like this?: Lands inhabited by indigenous peoples--Kaiyr (talk) 17:01, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

"Canek (chiefdom)" article
Should this article be removed? It has very little text and no references.

There is also a "Canek" page, which redirects to "Kan Ek'", which is a substantial article that probably covers whatever "Canek (chiefdom)" was created for originally.

The "Kan Ek'" article says in the lead paragraph that "in some studies Kan Ek' is used as the name of the Late Postclassic (c. 1200 to 1697) Petén Itza polity". I assume this is what was meant by "Canek (chiefdom)".

AvenidaK (talk) 19:39, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

User Boxes?
I want to get behind this project, hopefully I can help, in the mean time, take these:

Dkallen78 (talk) 02:20, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Tecoaque and Zultepec merger discussion
There is a discussion about whether or not the two articles Tecoaque and Zultepec should be merged. The discussion is at Talk:Tecoaque. --Bejnar (talk) 03:09, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Kuskatan/Cuzcatan (Cuzcatlan) listed at Requested moves
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The Mayan Movie: Riddle of the Mayan Cave
Good afternoon everyone! To complete the article Maya cave sites, I need a movie Riddle of the Mayan Cave to watch. Can't anyone get hold of this movie?

Thanks, --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 06:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (Yucatán conquistador) listed at Requested moves
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Mexican Plateau listed at Requested moves
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Irechecua listed at Requested moves
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Irechecua listed at Requested moves
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Request for Comment at Talk:Historicity of the Book of Mormon
There is a RfC at as to whether Historicity of the Book of Mormon should to be included in the "pseudohistory" category. –– FormalDude  talk  06:09, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Burial at Satunsat in Oxkintok
I met mentions that there was a burial of some important person in Satunsat in Oxkintok - are there detailed sources on this topic? Thank you in advance. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 19:41, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Maize listed at Requested moves
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Miguel Sánchez listed at Requested moves
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Maize listed at Requested moves
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Inca history
Hello, I already asked this on the teahouse, but maybe il have better answers here.

I mainly edit on the French Wikipedia where I participate in the Pre-Colombian America Project (that is America the continent obviously). On the French Wiki there is only this one project for all Pre-Colombian history. So I searched here and Discovered there was an Inca projet. However this project was inactive. I really only do articles about the Inca, so the Mesoamerica project doesn’t really help. Instead I searched for a Pre-Colombian America project and found nothing.

So now I’m here in order to ask if there is any (actif) project concerning Inca/Pre-colombian Andean history Reman Empire (talk) 13:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Women in Green's 5th Edit-a-thon
 Hello WikiProject Mesoamerica:

WikiProject Women in Green is holding a  month-long Good Article Edit-a-thon event in October 2023!

Running from October 1 to 31, 2023, WikiProject Women in Green (WiG) is hosting a Good Article (GA) edit-a-thon event with the theme Around the World in 31 Days! All experience levels welcome. Never worked on a GA project before? We'll teach you how to get started. Or maybe you're an old hand at GAs – we'd love to have you involved! Participants are invited to work on nominating and/or reviewing GA submissions related to women and women's works (e.g., books, films) during the event period. We hope to collectively cover article subjects from at least 31 countries (or broader international articles) by month's end. GA resources and one-on-one support will be provided by experienced GA editors, and participants will have the opportunity to earn a special WiG barnstar for their efforts.

We hope to see you there! Grnrchst (talk) 14:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Monarchies in the Americas
Monarchies in the Americas has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America listed at Requested moves
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