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The Olmecs (/ ˈ ɒ l m ɛ k s, ˈ oʊ l-/) or Olmec were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 BCE during Mesoamerica's formative period.
"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.
Specifics concerning Olmec religion are a matter of some conjecture. Early researchers found religious beliefs to be centered upon a jaguar god. [4] This view was challenged in the 1970s by Peter David Joralemon, whose Ph.D. paper [citation needed] and subsequent article posited what are now considered to be 8 different supernaturals.
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.
The "hell gate" artifact of the Olmec jaguar god was stolen over 100 years ago. Now, it's back home in Mexico after years of searching and restoration efforts. An Ancient Portal to the Underworld ...
1978. "So-Called Jaguar-Human Copulation Scenes in Olmec Art". American Antiquity 43(3): 453-457. Furst, Peter T. 1981. "Jaguar Baby or Toad Mother: A New Look at an Old Problem in Olmec Iconography", in The Olmec and Their Neighbors, edited by E.P. Benson, Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks: pp 149–162. Miller, Mary; Karl Taube (1993).
The consensus among most, but by no means all, archaeologists and researchers is that Olmecs weren't purely a mother nor a sister to other Mesoamerican cultures, but the hallmarks of the Olmec iconography were developed within the Olmec heartland and that this iconography became, in the words of Michael Coe, an "all-pervading art style ...
The Olmecs were the first Mesoamerican culture to produce an identifiable artistic and cultural style and may also have been the society that invented writing in Mesoamerica. By the Middle Preclassic Period (900–300 BCE), Olmec artistic styles had been adopted as far away as the Valley of Mexico and Costa Rica.