The first civilization of Central America

Olmecs - the first civilization of Central America

Everyone had heard of the three great civilizations of America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus - the Incas, the Maya and the Aztecs. They are, however, known primarily because they still existed at the time of the Great Geographical Discoveries. Many other civilizations developed in ancient America and died out before the arrival of the Europeans. One of the oldest were the enigmatic Olmecs, a people who around 1500 BC. Kr. built a civilization in the area of ​​present-day southern and central Mexico and Guatemala.

Many elements associated with Central American civilization - ball games, blood sacrifices, rubber cultivation, stone shaping and pyramid making, jade objects, jaguars as sacred animals, planned cities, chocolate consumption - originated among the Olmecs. However, very few historical sources have been preserved about the Olmecs - the first scholars who dealt with Olmec objects initially attributed them to the Miami. We do not know the name of the Olmec capital in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, so historians usually call it San Lorenzo. We don’t even know what the Olmecs called themselves; the word Olmek is of Aztec origin and means a man of rubber.

The most famous element of the Olmec heritage are certainly the monumental sculptures in the form of huge stone heads up to three meters high and weighing up to 28 tons. Each of them has different facial features so they are believed to represent Olmec rulers. The fact that they show only the head may stem from the belief that the seat of the soul is in the head. Another form of Olmec art are reliefs and paintings on stone. They are most often found at the entrances to caves, and depict rulers sitting on thrones or religious rituals. Images of gods made of jade, ceramics or wood have also been preserved.

The Olmec civilization mysteriously disappeared around 400 BC. Kr. The cause is unknown - perhaps a combination of attacks by local tribes and climate change.

The influence of the Olmecs on later cultures is undeniable, and their art is unique in many ways. It is mostly stylized and full of religious symbolism. There are, however, also examples of very naturalistic art with extremely precise depictions of human anatomy. The only American civilization that managed to reach that level of precision was the Maya, more than 1,000 years later.

A cradle of unique artistic style

The most recognizable element of Olmec culture and the symbol of Olmec civilization in general are the huge stone heads. This type of monument is unique in the world. They are up to 3.4 meters high and weigh up to 55 tons. They are made of hard volcanic basalt, less commonly serpentine, excavated in the Tuxtlas Mountains region of the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is estimated that at least 1,000 people had to be hired to transport one such head to the first Olmec capital, San Lorenzo, and that it would take them about three months - in Central America they did not know cars or have pack animals. Each head has different facial features and a unique head covering, so they are believed to represent Olmec rulers. The fact that they show only the head may stem from the belief that the seat of the soul is in the head. Although they are quite well known today, it is interesting that they were first recorded only in 1862, when the first was found by the traveler Jose Maria Melgar y Serrano at the Tres Zapotes site.

Other Olmec stone monuments include the so-called altars of rectangular shape (probably the bases of wooden thrones, which have meanwhile rotted), free-standing structures and stelae depicting personalities or historical events.

Another form of Olmec art are reliefs and paintings on stone. They are most often found at the entrances to sacred caves, and depict rulers or religious rituals. The Olmecs also made smaller statues of human, animal or divine figures from stone, ceramics, wood or jade, jewelry from the above materials, as well as characteristic jade masks. Many of these objects were ritually buried.

Mysterious religion

We have no written sources on Olmec deities. We do not know what they were called, what gender they were, or their exact function. Some of this can be assumed by comparison with the deities of later peoples who had similar attributes, typological analysis, and analysis of the beliefs of the modern Indian peoples of the area.

The most prominent place in religion belonged to the deities of fertility and agriculture. Olmec religious ceremonies were held in several places, from open-air temples, through sacred caves, to mountain tops. These places were symbolic links to heaven, earth, and the underworld.

Olmecs especially revered predators such as jaguars, eagles, caimans, snakes and sharks. The most sacred animal was the jaguar, and this was the case in many later Central American civilizations. There are indications of the belief that certain people, most often rulers, can turn into these beasts. They also depicted mythical creatures such as the so-called jaguar-haired (cross between man and jaguar), dragons, dwarves, sea monsters, etc.

Religious affairs were performed by professional priests, shamans, and rulers who were believed to be in direct contact with the gods. Numerous half-human-half-animal figurines (so-called transformation figures) have been found that may depict shamans during a symbolic transformation into their totem animal. The belief in the existence of people with the ability to take on the shape or characteristics of an animal survived even among the later peoples of Central America, who called them naguals or nahuals.

The first letter and calendar of the New World

The Olmecs were the first American culture to write. They spoke the language of the Mixe-Zoque family and are in use today in the area from Oaxaca to Veracruz in Mexico. Their letter is nevertheless, unfortunately, impossible to decipher due to the scarcity of written monuments. There is only one larger written monument, the Plate of Cascajala, which contains 62 symbols, 28 unique. As there are no signs on the Board to indicate the numbers, it seems to be a religious text, not an administrative one. There is controversy about its dating, but most experts believe that it originated between 900 and 1100 BC. Christ. It is intriguing that later Central American letters do not appear to have been derived from signs on the Cascajal Plate.

To better know when a particular festival falls, the Olmecs introduced a religious calendar of 260 days and 52-year cycles, which was adopted by later Central American civilizations.