Olmec civilization
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The earliest known civilization is the Olmec. This civilization
established the cultural blueprint by which all succeeding
indigenous civilizations would follow in Mexico. Olmec civilization
began with the production of pottery in abundance, around 2300 B.C.
Between 1800 B.C. and 1500 B.C., the Olmec consolidated power into
chiefdoms which established their capital at a site today known as
San Lorenzo, near the coast in south-east Veracruz. The Olmec
influence extended across Mexico, into Central America, and along
the Gulf of Mexico. They transformed many peoples' thinking toward a
new way of government, pyramid-temples, writing, astronomy, art,
mathematics, economics, and religion. Their achievements would pave
the way for the later greatness of the Maya civilization in the
east, and the civilizations to the west in central Mexico. |
The Olmec were an ancient Pre-Columbian people living in the
tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, roughly in what are the
modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco on the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec. Their immediate cultural influence went much further
though, Olmec artwork being found as far afield as El Salvador. The
Olmec predominated in their lands from about 1200 BC to about 400 BC
and they are, in fact, claimed by many to be the progenitors and
mother culture of every primary element common to later Mesoamerican
civilizations.
The Olmec heartland is characterized by swampy lowlands punctuated
by low hill ridges and volcanoes. The Tuxtla Mountains rise sharply
in the north, along the Bay of Campeche. Here the Olmecs constructed
permanent city-temple complexes at several locations, among them San
Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, Tres Zapotes, Laguna de los Cerros,
and La Mojarra. They also had great influence beyond the heartland:
from Chalcatzingo, far to the west in the highlands of Mexico, to
Izapa, on the Pacific coast near what is now Guatemala, Olmec goods
have been found throughout Mesoamerica during this period. In this
heartland, the first Mesoamerican civilization would emerge and
reign from 1200–400 BCE.
The Olmec may have been the first Mesoamericans to develop a writing
system, but no examples of it have yet been found. At the present
time, there is some debate as to whether or not symbols found in
2002 dated to 650 BC are actually a form of Olmec writing preceding
the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about 500 BC. There are other
later hieroglyphs known as " Epi-Olmec". "Epi-Olmec" means "post
Olmec", and while there are some who believe that Epi-Olmec may
represent a transitional script between an earlier, unknown Olmec
writing system and Maya writing, the matter is for the time being
unsettled.
The Olmec were perhaps the originators of the Mesoamerican ballgame
so prevalent among later cultures of the region and used for
recreational and religious purposes – certainly they were playing it
before anyone else has been documented doing so.
Their religion developed all the important themes (an obsession with
mathematics and with calendars, and a spiritual focus on death
expressed through human sacrifice) found in successor groups.
Finally, their political arrangements of strongly hierarchical
city-state kingdoms were repeated by nearly every other Mexican and
Central American civilization that followed.
The name "Olmec" means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the language of
the Mexican ("Aztec") people. It was the Aztec name for the people
who lived in this area at the much later time of Aztec dominance.
Ancient Mesoamericans, spanning from ancient Olmecs to Aztecs,
extracted latex from Castilla elastica, a type of rubber tree in the
area. The juice of a local vine, Ipomoea alba, was then mixed with
this latex to create rubber as early as 1600 BC. The word "Olmec"
also refers to the rubber balls used for their ancient ball game.
Early modern explorers applied the name "Olmec" to the rediscovered
ruins and art from this area before it was understood that these had
been already abandoned more than a thousand years before the time of
the people the Aztecs knew as the "Olmec". It is not known what name
the ancient Olmec used for themselves; some later Mesoamerican
accounts seem to refer to the ancient Olmec as "Tamoanchan". |
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