Page:Historia Verdadera del Mexico profundo.djvu/22

 4. THE PRECLASSICAL OR FORMATIVE PERIOD.

he first stage of the history of ancient Mexico is known as the PRECLASSIC or formative period, and lasted approximately for six thousand years; that is, it starts in the year 6,000 B.C., and extends to about 200 BCE. This period is very long and covers the great effort made by our ancestors to pass from being nomadic hunter-gatherers, primitive savages, until they formed small villages and developed an efficient food system; an effective health system; a complex educational system; a system of social organization and a legal system. They had, moreover, a refined system of values and philosophical, ethical, moral, aesthetic and religious knowledge that allowed them to lay strong foundations over which one of the most important and ancient civilizations that remains alive to date, despite the aggression it has suffered over the past five centuries, was developed.

This valuable civilizing infrastructure  that somehow remains alive and present today in contemporary Mexico and that the "imaginary Mexico" of Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, is reluctant to recognize, turns out to be the most important heritage bequeathed to us by the Old Grandparents of the Anahuac and is the deep foundation for all that we are today.

The relationship with nature and working with the land, especially with the milpa invention, allowed the peoples of ancient Mexico ____________________