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Olmecs

The Olmec flourished in South-Central Mexico roughly from as early as 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE. They were the first Mesoamerican civilization and laid many of the foundations for the civilizations that followed. Their culture paved the way for many of the hallmarks that distinguish nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies. These hallmarks include ritual bloodletting and the ballgame.

History

The area around the modern-day city of Veracruz near the Gulf of Mexico is generally considered the birthplace of the Olmec culture. This area is characterized by swampy lowlands punctuated by low hills, ridges, and volcanoes. Here the Olmecs constructed permanent city-temple complexes at San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and Laguna de los Cerros. In this region, the first Mesoamerican civilization would emerge and reign from c.1500-400 BCE.

Origins

Archeologists claim that the Olmec culture first appeared within the city of San Lorenzo, where distinctive Olmec features appear around 1400 BCE. The rise of civilization here was assisted by the local ecology of well-watered alluvial soil, as well as by the transportation network that the Coatzacoalcos River basin provided. This environment may be compared to that of other ancient centers of civilization: the Nile, Indus, and Yellow River valleys, and Mesopotamia. This highly productive environment encouraged a densely concentrated population which in turn triggered the rise of an elite class. It was this elite class that provided the social basis for the production of the symbolic and sophisticated luxury artifacts that define Olmec culture. Many of these luxury artifacts, such as jade, obsidian and magnetite, came from distant locations and suggest that early Olmec elites had access to an extensive trading network in Mesoamerica. The source of the most valued jade, for example, is found in the Motagua River valley in eastern Guatemala, and Olmec obsidian has been traced to sources in the Guatemala highlands, such as El Chayal and San Martín Jilotepeque, or in Puebla, distances ranging from 200 to 400 km away (120 - 250 miles away) respectively.

La Venta

The first Olmec center, San Lorenzo, was all but abandoned around 900 BCE at about the same time that La Venta rose to prominence. A wholesale destruction of many San Lorenzo monuments also occurred c.950 BCE, which may point to an internal uprising or, less likely, an invasion. Alternatively, the mutilation of these monuments may be unrelated to the decline and abandonment of San Lorenzo. Some researchers believe that this mutilation had ritualistic aspects, particularly since most mutilated monuments were reburied in a row. The latest thinking, however, is that environmental changes may have been responsible for this shift in Olmec centers, with certain important rivers changing course.

In any case, following the decline of San Lorenzo, La Venta became the most prominent Olmec center, lasting from 900 BCE until its abandonment around 400 BCE. La Venta sustained the Olmec cultural traditions, but with spectacular displays of power and wealth. The Great Pyramid was the largest Mesoamerican structure of its time. Even today, after 2500 years of erosion, it rises 34 meters above the naturally flat landscape. Buried deep within La Venta, lay opulent, labor-intensive offerings: 1000 tons of smooth serpentine blocks, large mosaic pavements, and at least 48 separate deposits of polished jade celts, pottery, figurines, and hematite mirrors.

Decline

It is not known with any clarity what caused the eventual extinction of the Olmec culture. It is known that between 400 and 350 BCE, population in the eastern half of the Olmec heartland dropped precipitously, and the area would remain sparsely inhabited until the 19th century. This depopulation was likely the result of very serious environmental changes that rendered the region unsuited for large groups of farmers, in particular changes to the river environment that the Olmec depended upon for agriculture, for hunting and gathering, and for transportation. Archaeologists propose that these changes were triggered by tectonic upheavals or subsidence, or the silting up of rivers due to agricultural practices.

One theory says that the considerable population drop during this period is due to volcanism instead of extinction. Volcanic eruptions during this period would have blanketed the lands and forced the Olmecs to move their settlements.

Whatever the cause, within a few hundred years of the abandonment of the last Olmec cities, successor cultures had become firmly established. The Tres Zapotes site, on the western edge of the Olmec heartland, continued to be occupied well past 400 BCE, but without the hallmarks of the Olmec culture.