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"Olmec-style" face mask in jade. The Olmec civilization developed in the lowlands of southeastern Mexico between 1500 and 400 BC. [3] The Olmec heartland lies on the Gulf Coast of Mexico within the states of Veracruz and Tabasco, an area measuring approximately 275 kilometres (171 mi) east to west and extending about 100 kilometres (62 mi) inland from the coast. [4]
The name "Olmec" means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahuas, and was the Aztec term for the people who lived in the Gulf Lowlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, some 2,000 years after the Olmec culture died out.
Through subsequent research, it became apparent that not every cleft head nor every downturned mouth represented a werejaguar. [9] Some researchers have therefore refined the werejaguar supernatural, specifically equating it with the Olmec rain deity, [10] a proposition that artist, archaeologist, and ethnographer Miguel Covarrubias had made as early as 1946 in Mexico South.
These heads were in a slightly irregular row, facing north. The other colossal head—Monument 1 (shown at left) – is a few dozen meters south of the Great Pyramid. The La Venta heads are thought to have been carved by 700 BCE, but possibly as early as 850 BCE, while the San Lorenzo heads are credited to an earlier period.
The Pre-classic period was dominated by the highly developed Olmec civilization, which flourished around 1200–400 BCE. The Olmecs produced jade figurines, and created heavy-featured, colossal heads, up to 2 meters (6.6 ft) high, that still stand mysteriously in the landscape. The Mesoamerican tradition of building large ceremonial centres ...
San Lorenzo and the Olmec heartland.. Matthew Stirling was the first to begin excavations on the site after a visit in 1938. [12] Between 1946 and 1970, four archaeological projects were undertaken, including one Yale University study headed by Michael Coe and Richard Diehl conducted between 1966 and 1968, followed by a lull until 1990.
The Olmec heartland.. Tres Zapotes is a Mesoamerican archaeological site located in the south-central Gulf Lowlands of Mexico in the Papaloapan River plain. Tres Zapotes is sometimes referred to as the third major Olmec capital (after San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán and La Venta), but the Olmec phase is only a portion of the site's history, [1] which continued through the Epi-Olmec and Classic ...
"Native Peoples of Colonial Central Mexico". The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. 2: 187–222. ISBN 0-521-65204-9. Gibson, Charles (1964). The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule. Stanford University Press. Jones, Grant D. (2000). "The Lowland Maya from the Conquest to the Present". The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of ...