What we know about the Olmecs is shadowed by what we do not, most notably their origin and their name. The riddle further deepens when we look at their art, which still puzzles researchers, among which are seventeen massive stone heads found on Mexico’s gulf coast, among many others. Most Olmec settlements were found, as recorded in the Codex Mendoza (1541) and the Florentine Codex (1585), on the Gulf Coast in today’s states of Puebla and Tabasco. According to sixteenth century Spanish chronicler Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (1585), Aztecs informants, asked about the lands and people, told him that it was called Olman in the Nahuatl language, or those who live in “the land of rubber,” for the latex extracted from the Moracea family tree (Castilla elastica), from which rubber balls for ritual games were made. By 1519, the Aztecs had incorporated the western part of Olman into their empire. Their codices list every province and the tributes paid by each to the lord of Tenochtitlán; Olman was one of the richest.
We know that the Olmecs had a writing and numbering system of dots (0 to 4) and short bars (for 5), which was later acquired by the Mayas who followed them. However, no complete texts from the Olmec culture have survived. Before the Olmecs, Paleo-Indians inhabited Olman, a fact learned from archaeological remains dated 5100-4600 BC. Radiocarbon and cross dating with sites in other parts of Mesoamerica anchor the Olmec culture to early 2700 BC. Archaeologist Ann Cyphers points to ceramic remains in the La Venta area of Veracruz, that attest to village life from 2300 to 2100 BC.
The archaeological record then shows a steady development during the years known as the Middle Formative, 1800 to 1400 BC. Monumental artworks iconography and significance point to an early date, and a powerful social class organized in hierarchical lineages. The population, besides craftsmen and traders, was dedicated to food production, farming and corvee labor. The settlement of La Venta and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán were likely inhabited as early as 1900 BC by people who were the direct ancestors of the Olmecs. Artist and scholar Miguel Covarrubias, considered the Olmecs the “mother culture of all others in ancient Mexico.”
Olman territory covered about 3,800 square miles, including the Papaloapan, Coetzalcoalcos and Tonalá river basins, and adjacent foothills south and east of the Tuxtla mountains, the main source for basalt used to sculpt large stone figures. These mountains were the main source of basalt, used to sculpt the large stone figures, for which the Olmecs are known today. The mountain range includes the historically active volcano San Martin Tuxtla which rises above 5500 feet and whose last eruption was in 1793. Extinct volcanoes are the San Martin Pajapan (3800 ft.) and the Cerro El Vigia (2600 ft.), there are also several smaller cinder cones found throughout the range.
The Olmec heartland extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the crest of the mountain ranges of Oaxaca, to the state of Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the south. It covers the states of Veracruz and western Tabasco where most of the culture’s impressive remains are found. This core zone is a complex mosaic of large streams, tributaries, natural levies, swamps, lakes, upland ridges and islands. The number of villages and towns increased across the land, built on natural mounds often surrounded by streams or swamps. Annual rainfall and floods were common in such a tropical environment. On large mounds were raised truncated pyramids made of packed earth and stones.
The large mounds were associated with the mountain of the beginning of time where human life was believed to have begun, atop which communities were built, surrounded by the primordial sea. Today, as in the past, seasonal changes in river levels dominate life in the region. The 800 years between 1200 and 400 BC saw the development of great sites at San Lorenzo (1200-800 BC), which stands at the beginning of the Olmec sequence, La Venta (800-400 BC), and Tres Zapotes, which developed between 400BC and 100AD, at the end of the sequence.
Few Olmec skeletons survived in the acid tropical soils of Olman, so the Olmecs’ physical appearance remains uncertain. However, the archaeological record shows Olmec stone works with realistic depictions of the morphological phenotypes of people living in tropical rainforest, such as compact and squat muscular bodies, short wide noses, epicanthic folds that give the eyes an Asian cast, a fleshy mouth with thick, at times downturned lips, a short neck, and black hair both straight and curly. These morphological particulars are not unique. They are generally found in human communities living in hot and humid climates that help people survive in taxing environments such as those of the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, the tropical islands of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Over the last years, the origin of the Olmecs has been the subject of unfounded speculations by afro centrists claiming that they came from Africa (Van Sertina, 1976, et al.). These claims are utterly refuted by the world scientific community through DNA analysis. Thorough scientific and anthropological research by world renown geneticists and scholars unquestionably establishes that remains from San Lorenzo and Loma del Zapote shared the five mtDNA haplogroups A, B, C, D, and X common to Olmec remains and today’s indigenous groups of the region, to the exclusion of any other. Before the Norse explorer Leif Erikson’s landing in North America (1018-1025), no transatlantic crossing is recorded in the north or south Atlantic oceans and nothing after that until Columbus in 1492. Nor were any foreign human, animal, or material remains found in the archaeological and anthropological records predating Olmec occupation.
So, how did the Olmecs get there? Human migrations from Eurasia over 34,000 years ago are well documented. People then walked across the thousand miles wide ice bound Bering land-bridge to the Americas, on the trails of large wild games. In southern Chile, Monte Verde.I paleolithic site, dated 16,500 BC, is a long way from the ice bridge, and underline the extent and persistence of human migrations far back in recorded history. Carlson, Erlanson, and others argue for a coastal migration by boat along the Pacific northwest 12,000 years ago. Austronesians mastered ocean travel by 7000 BC when they landed on the island of Taiwan, and later in the Philippines, in 4200 BC. During the Asian Bronze Age (3300-1300 BC), untold numbers of human groups sporadically migrated from the Eurasian landmass, and the southeast Asia tropical forests to the Americas by land, and along coastal routes. The initial settlements of most groups took place along the Pacific coasts of the Americas, many settling in tropical lowlands. Through time and the Tehuantepec mountains gap, migrants moved East to the Gulf of Mexico; among them were those the Aztecs called the Olmecs.
Through the Upper Preclassic (2400-1200 BC), Olmec lords ability to mobilize large workforces to build huge earth pyramidal mounds and monumental stone sculptures increased significantly. After 1200BC, San Lorenzo, was built on a 220-acre truncated earthwork mound, consisting of over seven million cubic yards of hard packed sediments. On its two-and-a-half-acre top, large stone buildings were erected among which was the twenty-thousand-square-foot Red Palace complex and elite residences, together with secular and ceremonial structures. Lower population segments such as lesser nobility, traders, and master craftsmen resided on the lower slopes of the pyramid, while commoners and farmers lived on scattered mounds beyond. The four levels of Olmec physical environment revolved around land, water, plants and animals. Olman was associated with a spiritual world that controlled both nature and people, because actual and spiritual worlds were then perceived as one and the same.
The massive structure at San Lorenzo was symbolically regarded as the primordial sacred mountain, surrounded by the mythic waters from the beginning of time. Its massive stone artworks underlined the political and religious powers of the state at this early time, who could marshal thousands of workers and specialists (Cyphers, 2018). The thought process that brought this spiritual awareness was grounded in totemism which unfolded over untold past generations and helped people to grasp and share life with an inherently hostile nature. These beliefs were at the root of the binary nature-culture dichotomy, whose mythic beings and deified ancestors of the mind were understood to live in caves’ deepest recess, homes of the Earth Monsters associated with the earth. The deity is also found in later Mesoamerican myths deemed to be related with their political and priesthood hierarchies whose legitimacy to govern was believed to be conceded by the divine (B. de la Fuente, 1996).
Olmec architecture initiated the formal patterns that were later followed by other cultures in Mesoamerica. It also followed the now conventional association with the orientation of buildings to cardinal points, and the placement of sculptures in astronomical alignment. Monumental stone sculptures were dedicated to recreating historic or mythic events in large cities and towns. The Olmecs stand out from other Mesoamerican cultures as the only people to create colossal heads without neck or body. The reason may be that the head was perceived as the seat of the five senses, knowledge, emotions, and the most obvious visual identity of a person. The record shows that most heads were carved from single blocks of volcanic boulders from the Sierra de los Tuxtlas. Others, such as those of Tres Zapotes, were sculpted from basalt from the summit of Cerro El Vigia, at the western end of the Tuxtlas chain. The San Lorenzo and La Venta heads, on the other hand, were probably carved from basalt from the southeastern side of Cerro Cintepec. Seventeen massive stone heads have been found; however, more may still be buried.
The large heads sizes range from over five and half to eleven feet in height, while their weight varies from six to twenty-five tons. Head.1/Monument.1, is 25.3 tons (9.3×6.9ft), and Head.8/SL61 at San Lorenzo is 13 tons and 7.2 feet high. Ann Cyphers, who discovered the last head (SL10, 1994) at San Lorenzo remarks that they were figures from dead lords (2007). The stone blocks, from which heads were carved were roughly shaped at the quarry before being carried over inhospitable terrain to their final location. The means of transportation, at times over forty miles of land, rivers, and swamps, is still debated. Each massive stone may have required over a thousand men mobilized for up to four months, between sowing and harvesting seasons, to carry the large stones from quarry to destination, which points to the dictate of a powerful state. Wood platforms and rollers were likely used to move heavy loads over hard ground before they were loaded on large rafts over rivers and lakes. On arrival at a designated site, craftsmen worked the roughly shaped stone into a head, a throne or other monumental artwork.
Opinions vary regarding the identity and function of sculptures variously identified as ballplayers (Pina Chan, Covarrubias, 1964), gods of vegetation (Coe, 1978), or monuments of dead leaders (Westheim, 1963). Our opinion is that the heads were those of descendants of living lords vindicating their indisputable right to rule inherited from their ascendants. The importance of portrayal underlines dynastic representations and the illustrious nature that justified aristocracy (Shele and Miller, 1986; Shele and Freidel, 1990). Mexican archaeologist B. de la Fuente (2020), point out the similarities of the almond shaped eyes on large heads, implying family or marriage alliances from lords of the ruling families of San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes.
Another cultural marker of interest are head covers, which are of close similarity among the seventeen heads. They suggest tanned pliable leather “helmets” with the knot holding them on the back of the head. Most heads have large earplugs inserted into the earlobes. Remains of white plaster and, occasionally, a reddish substance that could be iron oxide, suggest that they were perhaps brightly decorated (Diehl, 2004:112). The “helmets” fit tightly on the skull and are adorned with symbolic elements. Among those are bird heads or feet on SL2, 5, 10 and on LV1 and 4. Feline claws on SL7, ropes on SL3, 4, 6 and 9. Cut heads and hands are on SL.7 and 8, together with other emblems or badges. As noted, the mark for large stone heads are the eyes. The two oldest heads with “biased” eyes (SL7 and SL8), are dated 1400-1200 BC. Almond shaped eyes, such as SL6, are common in the period 1200-1000 BC, while both eye shapes co-existed in later times. We do not know when the carving of colossal heads began or if the custom lasted fifty, a hundred years, or more.
It seems, as Diehl observes, that the display of colossal heads may have been short lived, lasting only fifty to a hundred years (2004). We do know, however, that the heads at San Lorenzo were buried before 900 BC, but we have no proof to support the chronology for heads from La Venta and Tres Zapotes because they were moved after discovery from their archaeological context. The archaeological record also uncovered heads carved from wood that preceded those made of stone. They were much smaller in size and were probably worshipped in families and in phratries. Since stones cannot be dated, plants, seeds and/or animal remains found in archaeological contexts were and still are used today in dating a process. Among notable vegetal remains in Olmec and later Mesoamerican cultures, is maize also called corn, which was widely cultivated before 3500 BC, and is still used as a daily staple. The plant we know as maize was domesticated from the wild Teosinte (Zea mais), a native plant of Mexico, nine thousand or more years before, and grew to the sizes we know today through time and human selection. Maize was unknown in other parts of the world and was introduced to Europe following Columbus’ travels to the New World in 1492. It did not become a major crop until the seventeenth century in France when it was used as an ornamental plant (Crosby, 1976, Bonavia, 2008). Maize reached Africa before Europe carried by Portuguese slave raiders in the early sixteenth century.
The Olmec maize and water gods were an agricultural dyad that was of utmost importance to rulers and farmers alike, and were worshipped for both secular and religious reasons, among others were promoting fertility, abundant harvest and well-being. The massive stone heads such as those at San Lorenzo were used not only to commemorate ancestral and present lords of the realm but also to delimit important public spaces. Regional distribution of monumental artworks relates to settlements at the end of the Early Preclassic (2000-1000 BC). Around San Lorenzo island, monumental markers signal to the relative importance of satellite centers such as Loma del Zapote, Estero Rabon, and El Remolino, as well as landmarks to water, overland transportation and communication for Olmec regional administration (Cyphers, 2018). As David Grove suggests about La Venta, sculptures and buried offerings formed a deliberate cosmography, “an integrated and symbolically charged arrangement created for the benefit of the supernatural patrons of the city’s elite.”
Other notable massive Olmec artworks are thrones, until recently thought to be altars, which were carved from granite from the Tuxtla mountains and, at times, from discarded stone heads. A throne was a massive rectangular monolith with a flat top projecting over its lateral and frontal face. The La Venta Throne.5 shows a man seated on the threshold of the sacred cave’s portal to the underworld, the land of ancestors. The cave mouth was believed to be that of the most important god of the Olmec religion, the Jaguar-Dragon or God.I, lord of fire and heat. The deity is sometimes represented with vegetation springing from his body and is thus associated with volcanoes and caves, drought and fertility. It also probably was the god of the household hearths that stood at the center of Olmec homes (Joralemon, 1971:90). The seated man is believed to be the deceased lord and father of the living son in power. Sculpted in the round, he is shown coming out of the depths of the earth holding the ancestral link in the shape of a rope carved in low relief surrounding the base of the throne. The rope is held by his own dead father on the throne’s right side. The seated man’s left hand holds his right ankle while the link or rope comes out of the cave behind him, signifying the permanence of life and time. His right hand, in inverse or facing position, holds the rope that metaphorically links his deceased father, now associated with life’s continuum. The Earth Monster’s face, eyes, crossed-bar icon and fangs are carved in low relief over the cave’s entrance, proclaiming that the ancestor is coming from the “other world” through the cave gullet. The older son, the living lord of the realm at dedicated times, sat on the throne’s flat top, visually and figuratively validating his ancestral and unquestionable right to rule.
Massive heads and altars were meant to project and legitimate the ascendency of Olmec lords secular and spiritual powers which were perceived as one and the same because, as found in subsequent Mesoamerican cultures, the lords of the lands were also the highest priests. Altar.4 at San Lorenzo shows a man sitting cross-legged at the mouth of the Earth Monster cave. Carved in the round, he wears an elaborate conical hat, ear plugs, and a pectoral. On his crossed legs lies a young boy resting on his back. It could be the rain god, God.IV, which is always depicted as an infant or dwarf. Of note is the absence of an ornate frame as with God.I above the cave’s entrance. The odd shape of Altar.4 indicates that it probably was carved from a massive head that, for reason unknown, was re-used to create it. Or was it, perhaps, for lack of basalt whose quarry at that time may have been under the control of an antagonist faction? Altar.4, faces Throne.5 across Structure D.8 at San Lorenzo.
On the right-side panel of the Altar.4, the scene carved in low relief pictures two men, each carrying a young boy in their arms. Both men were probably shamans or priests, for they wear distinctive attires. The one on the right wore a hat with the number seven, shown as 2-dots over a 5-bar, representative of the four cardinal directions, together with the zenith, the nadir, and the cave at their intersection. Each boy’s face is depicted as a “were jaguar” the mythological figure, half jaguar-half female human, associated with nature and fertility. It could again be God.IV, one of many supernatural primary dual deities of Olmec and other Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Maya hero twins, Hunapu and Xbalanque. These mythical primary deities are also found in north American indigenous mythologies such as with the Mississippians and other native groups whose beliefs portray, in their own fashion, the ever-present opposite forces of nature and share certain themes across cultural boundaries.
The enigmatic figure, called the “Lord of Las Limas” (Señor de las Limas) shows many glyphs etched on its face and body. These are, according to scholars Coe, Taube and Joralemon, the keys to understanding this remarkable sculpture. Dated from the middle pre-classic (900-400 BC) it is twenty-two inches high, seventeen inches wide and weighs one hundred and thirty-five pounds. It is finely carved in the round and made of green jadeite. It depicts a seated man holding a young child lying on his back on the man’s crossed knees. Among many symbols on the man’s body, four incised tattoo-like sacred designs are on his shoulders and knees. The figures are depictions of each oldest known Olmec gods, found later in figures God.I, God.II, God.IV and God.VII. The child has the face of a “were jaguar,” with a cleft on top of his skull, and slanting almond-shaped eyes with round irises. Covarrubias describes it as “God.I the Olmec primary deity, with flame eyebrows that reveal him as the god of fire, a downturned open mouth, a flared upper lip and toothless gums” (1957). The child cleft head or indentation on top of the skull, is associated with God.II. and read as maize sprouting out of the earth, the utmost gift of the god to humans. His downturned open mouth carries jaguar attributes, prominent in iconographic cultures of Mesoamerica. God.IV, the rain god, is always depicted as a young child a reminder of the god Tlaloc and the sacrifice of little children found in the Aztec archaeological record. God.VII is the precious-feathered serpent, lord of life and wisdom, of the winds and the celestial realm, the primary deity linked to the power and authority of rulers (Joralemon, 1971:90). De la Fuente notes the Lord’s association with maize, agricultural fertility and the mysterious dwarves so frequently depicted in Olmec stone sculpture (1996:34). The statue was probably carried as a roughly shaped jadeite block from an Olmec outpost eight hundred miles away to the south, in the Motagua river valley of Guatemala, for there is no jadeite or jade in the Tuxtla mountain range and would then have then been fully carved at La Venta. The statue was discovered by children from the Las Limas village community in 1965. It was then placed in the local church were, over the years, the faithful prayed to the “green virgin.” The growing devotion caught the attention of local authorities who recognized the statue’s antiquity and moved it to the local museum.
Smaller Olmec ceramic and stone works of art help us understand their secular and spiritual worlds. Below the older floor of the Red Palace at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, archaeologists found Dedicatory Offering.4. It consists of a group of sixteen small, carefully shaped male figurines standing in a semi-circle in front of six standing celts, of which four are engraved. Twelve figurines and the celts are made of jadeite, while four are made of serpentine. The central figurine, with his back to the row of celts facing the group, is made of basalt. The offering was ritually buried in a deep, narrow hole, covered with three layers of colored clay. They are undecorated – unusual if they were deities – but were covered with cinnabar, a red iron oxide powder used in rituals associated with death. We do not know why a different stone was used for the commanding figure facing the group. Was it meant to depict a reunion dedicated to an initiatory ceremony, or perhaps a man of status awaiting sentence from his peers? We may never know; however, we do know that this little spiritual complex was very important, because over the years, the floor of the palace was restored and repainted several times. The covered cache was then opened, resealed and reopened, probably at dedicated times, to perhaps ensure that “they” were still there!
Mesoamerican societies shared many cultural traits, the most important of which was their common world view. Underlying all Mesoamerican thought was a sense of dualism coupled with the concept of the unity of opposites. Equally important, was a deeply rooted belief in the cyclical nature of time and events, and in the concept that human existence with nature, gods and the universe itself, ultimately and irrevocably, is determined by fate. Much more is known about the Olmecs that this short article barely covers; so, we will examine their stunning art in a forthcoming article.
Between 900 and 850 BC, the population of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán slowly left the city and neighboring towns. We do not know the reasons for this exodus, but several factors may have contributed among which may have been volcanic activity, waterways drying, or other extreme climatic factors whose combined outcomes contributed to spiritual and socio-political collapse. As Cyphers notes, between 800 and 600 BC, called the Nacaste phase, saw that about a thousand people were left in the city and its vicinity: a 90% reduction from the previous phase (2007:42). Over the last generations, breakdown of the food supply may have led people to move to La Venta, then the rising center of the Olmec region. Contact with the outside world came to an end by 400 BC, when San Lorenzo and virtually all eastern Olman’s riverine zone was abandoned. As Diehl underlines, the Late Formative period (500 BC-200 AD) was a time of vigorous growth in every part of Mesoamerica except for Olman (2004:180). The Epi-Olmec culture (300BC-250AD) appeared in Tres Zapotes and Cerro de las Mesas in the lower Papaloapan river drainage, a region that had been something of a cultural backwater in earlier days. By then, Olmec capitals with the furthest reaches in Mesoamerica were silent.
