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Olmecs
The Olmecs () or Olmec were an early known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 Before the Common Era, BCE during Mesoamerica's Mesoamerican chronology, formative period. They were initially centered at the site of their development in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, but moved to La Venta in the 10th century BCE following the decline of San Lorenzo. The Olmecs disappeared mysteriously in the 4th century BCE, leaving the region sparsely populated until the 19th century. Among other "firsts", the Olmec appeared to practice Bloodletting in Mesoamerica, ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame, hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies. The aspect of the Olmecs most familiar now is their artwork, particularly the Olmec colossal heads, colossal heads. The Olmec civilization was first defined through artifacts which collectors purchased on the pre-Columbian art mark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olmec Colossal Heads
The Olmec colossal heads are stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders. They range in height from . The heads date from at least 900 BCE and are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica.Diehl 2004, p. 111. All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz. The backs of the monuments are often flat. The boulders were brought from the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz. Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported more than , requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers. Each of the known examples has a distinctive headdress. The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Political divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. Located in eastern Mexico, Veracruz is bordered by seven states, which are Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo (state), Hidalgo, Puebla, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Tabasco. Veracruz is divided into Municipalities of Veracruz, 212 municipalities, and its capital city is Xalapa, Xalapa-Enríquez. Veracruz has a significant share of the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico on the east of the state. The state is noted for its mixed ethnic and indigenous populations. Cuisine of Veracruz, Its cuisine reflects the many cultural influences that have come through the state because of the importance of the port of Veracruz (city), Veracruz. In addition to the capital city, the state's largest cities include Veracruz, Coatzacoalcos, Córdoba, V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerican Chronology
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian, prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present). The periodisation of Mesoamerica by researchers is based on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and modern cultural anthropology research dating to the early twentieth century. Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, historians, and cultural anthropologists continue to work to develop cultural histories of the region. Overview Paleo-Indian period 18000–8000 BCE The Paleo-Indian (less frequently, ''Lithic stage, Lithic'') period or era is that which spans from the first signs of human presence in the region, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Venta
La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Some of the artifacts have been moved to the museum "Parque - Museo de La Venta", which is in nearby Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco. Overview The Olmec were one of the first civilizations to develop in the Americas. Chronologically, the history of the Olmecs can be divided into the Early Formative (1800-900 BCE), Middle Formative (900-400 BCE) and Late Formative (400 BCE-200AD). The Olmecs are known as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, meaning that the Olmec civilization was the first culture that spread and influenced Mesoamerica. The spread of Olmec culture eventually led to cultural features found throughout all Mesoamerican societies. Rising from the sedentary agriculturalists of the Gulf Lowlands as early as 1600 BCE in the Early Formative period, the Olmecs held sway in the Olmec heartland, an area on the southern Gulf of Mexico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laguna De Los Cerros
Laguna de los Cerros is a little-excavated Olmec and Classical era archaeological site, located in the vicinity of Corral Nuevo, within the municipality of Acayucan, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, in the southern foothills of the Tuxtla Mountains, some south of the Laguna Catemaco. With Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, and La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros is considered one of the four major Olmec centers. Laguna de los Cerros ("lake of the hills") was so named because of the nearly 100 mounds dotting the landscape. The basic architectural pattern consists of long parallel mounds flanking large rectangular plazas. Conical mounds mark the plaza ends. Larger mounds, formerly raised residential platforms, are associated with the thinner parallel mounds. It has been confirmed that the site was not occupied during the postclassical period. Most of the mounds date from the Classical era, roughly 250 CE through 900 CE. This region, and the early Olmec people, presumably ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and northwestern part of Costa Rica. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures. In the pre-Columbian era, many Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas began on Hispaniola in 1493. In world history, Mesoamerica was the site of two historical transformations: (i) primary urban generation, and (ii) the formation of New World cultures from the mixtures of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples with the European, African, and Asian peoples who were introduced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Mesoameri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán
San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán or San Lorenzo is the collective name for three related archaeological sites—San Lorenzo, Tenochtitlán and Potrero Nuevo—located in the southeast portion of the Mexican state of Veracruz. Along with La Venta and Tres Zapotes, it was one of the three major cities of the Olmec, and the major center of Olmec culture from 1400 BCE to 900 BCE. San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán is best known today for the Olmec colossal heads, colossal stone heads unearthed there, the greatest of which weigh or more and are high.Diehl, p. 41. The site isn’t to be confused with Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital located within Mexico City. Administrative names were translated into Aztec/Nahuatl and spread alongside Catholic names during the European conquest, replacing any original locality names, as the original Olmec name was lost. Description The earliest evidence for Olmec culture is found at nearby El Manatí, a sacrificial bog with artifacts dating to 1600 BCE or earlier. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miguel Covarrubias
Miguel Covarrubias, also known as José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud (22 November 1904 — 4 February 1957) was a Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist and art historian. Along with his American colleague Matthew W. Stirling, he was the co-discoverer of the Olmec civilization. Early life José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was born on 22 November 1904 in Mexico City. After graduating from the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at the age of 14, he started producing caricatures and illustrations for texts and training materials published by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. He also worked for the Ministry of Communications. In 1923, at the age of 19, he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government, tremendous talent, but very little English. In her book ''Covarrubias'', author Adriana Williams writes that Mexican poet José Juan Tablada and New York Times critic/photographer Carl Van Vechten introduced him to New York's literary/cultu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epi-Olmec Culture
The Epi-Olmec culture was a cultural area in the central region of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz. Concentrated in the Papaloapan River basin, a culture that existed during the Late Formative period, from roughly 300 BCE to roughly 250 CE. Epi-Olmec was a successor culture to the Olmec, hence the prefix "epi-" or "post-". Although Epi-Olmec did not attain the far-reaching achievements of that earlier culture, it did realize, with its sophisticated calendrics and writing system, a level of cultural complexity unknown to the Olmecs. Tres Zapotes and eventually Cerro de las Mesas were the largest Epi-Olmec centers though neither would reach the size and importance of the great Olmec cities before them nor El Tajín after them. Other Epi-Olmec sites of note include El Mesón, Lerdo de Tejada, La Mojarra, Bezuapan, and Chuniapan de Abajo. Cultural context The rise of the Epi-Olmec culture on the western edge of the Olmec heartland coincides with the depopulation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Columbian Art
Pre-Columbian art refers to the Visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Americas, visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North America, North, Central America, Central, and South Americas from at least 13,000 BCE to the European conquests starting in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian era continued for a time after these in many places, or had a transitional phase afterwards. Many types of perishable artifacts that were once very common, such as woven textiles, typically have not been preserved, but Precolumbian monumental sculpture, metalwork in gold, pottery, and painting on ceramics, walls, and rocks have survived more frequently. The first pre-Columbian art to be widely known in modern times was that of the empires flourishing at the time of European conquest, the Inca and Aztec, some of which was taken back to Europe intact. Gradually art of earlier civilizations that had already collapsed, especially Maya art and Olmec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Las Limas Monument 1
Las Limas Monument 1, also known as the Las Limas figure or the Señor de las Limas, is a greenstone figure of a youth holding a limp were-jaguar baby. Found in the State of Veracruz, Mexico, in the Olmec heartland, the statue is famous for its incised representations of Olmec supernaturals. It is the largest known greenstone sculpture. Interpretation Sculptures of headdressed figures holding inert were-jaguar babies appear often in the Olmec archaeological record, from the smallest of figurines to the huge table-top thrones such as La Venta Altar 5. What these sculptures symbolised to the Olmecs is not clear. Some researchers, focusing on the symbolic cave surrounding the figure on Altar 5 believe that these sculptures relate to myths of spiritual journeys or human origins. Others find that the limp depiction of the were-jaguar baby denotes child sacrifice. File:Las Limas Right shoulder.svg, Figure from right shoulder, generally identified as the Banded-eye God. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castilla Elastica
''Castilla elastica'', the Panama rubber tree, is a tree native to the tropical areas of Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. It was the principal source of latex among the Mesoamerican peoples in pre-Columbian times. The latex gathered from ''Castilla elastica'' was converted into usable rubber by mixing the latex with the juice of the morning glory species ''Ipomoea alba'' which, conveniently, is typically found in the wild as a vine climbing ''Castilla elastica''. The rubber produced by this method found several uses, including most notably, the manufacture of balls for the Mesoamerican ballgame '' ōllamaliztli''. The Nahuatl word for rubber was ''ulli / olli'', from which their word for the ballgame derived), and also their name for the ancient people they associated with the origin of the ballgame, the Olmecs (''olmeca'': "rubber people"). The Nahuatl word for the tree of ''Castilla elastica'' is ''olicuáhuitl''; in Spanish it is known as palo de hule. Sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
