Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every week I sit down for a 40-minute conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

On today's episode, I'm joined by James Doyle, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I ask him, who is keeping it real and Mesoamerica.

Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Van Ness, this is such an exciting episode.

Our guest is incredible, the subject is amazing, nothing new there, an either front.

Welcome James Doyle, who has been archaeologist specializing in ancient Mayan art and architecture.

He is currently the assistant curator for art of the ancient Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

James, welcome.

Thank you so much, Jonathan, for having me.

Yes, okay, so, you know, I don't want you to sprain your neck, but you might win, I asked my first few questions, because we're not in 101,

where I like Mesoamerican, like preschool.

What are we talking about when we say Mesoamerican societies?

Like, where are we, what are we talking about, where in the world is it?

So, where are we?

We are thinking about what was going on in basically North Central and South America before European colonization.

So, Mesoamerica is a term that was coined to describe the cultural area that basically spreads between about Central Mexico and Northern Honduras and El Salvador.

So, it's a term, it's more of a cultural term than an geographic term.

So, we're looking at the societies that flourished in a couple of thousand years in what is now Central Mexico into Guatemala and Belize, Honduras and El Salvador.

And the uniting cultural traits that we're thinking about are the use of a numeral system.

So, they were writing numbers using bars and dots.

The dots are one, the bars are five. It's pretty simple.

But that was spread throughout the region.

And we also have hieroglyphic writing.

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