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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 ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame , hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies.
"The Olmec Football Player" [30] is a 1980 short story by Katherine MacLean. In it, at least one of the Olmec colossal heads depicts an African-American college student who traveled back in time while wearing his football helmet. In The Mysterious Cities of Gold, the few remaining Olmecs are described as being descendants of Atlanteans.
The Olmec flourished on the Gulf Coast of Mexico c. 1250–400 BCE.The evidence for the Cascajal writing system is based solely on the text on the Cascajal Block, but existence of a system of Olmec hieroglyphs has been postulated independently from the Cascajal Block on the basis of previous discoveries of glyphs individually or in small groups.
The artifact was a six-foot-by-five-foot Olmec Cave Mask, also known as a Portal al Inframundo (“passage to the underworld”), depicting the Olmec jaguar god Tepeyollotlicuhti with its flaring ...
La Venta was the last great Olmec centre. Olmec artisans sculpted jade and clay figurines of Jaguars and humans. Their iconic giant heads – believed to be of Olmec rulers – stood in every major city. The Olmec civilization ended in 400 BC, with the defacing and destruction of San Lorenzo and La Venta, two of the major cities.
There is debate as to whether Olmec symbols, dated to 650 BC, are actually a form of writing preceding the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about 500 BC. [17] In the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, there were Zapotec and Mixtec artisans who fashioned jewelry for the Aztec rulers , including Moctezuma II.
Very little Olmec or other Early Formative era art shows war or sacrifice. [20] No stelae have been found extolling rulers' victories, unlike the later Maya or the contemporaneous Egyptian or Hittite cultures. Olmec colonization, that is the founding of new settlements by Olmec emigrants outside of the Olmec heartland, is unlikely.
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.