Olmec

As Olmecs (from Nahuatl singular Ōlmēcatl [o ː l ː me kat͡ɬ ] or plural Ōlmēcah [o ː l ː me kaʔ ] for "People of the rubber country " ) the support of the Central American La Venta culture were designated by archaeologists. Your actual ethnic association is unknown. They have nothing to do with the historically documented much later Olmeca - Xicallanca.

Names Identification

On the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico archaeologists uncovered freely in the 1920s, sites of early culture, which until the mid- first millennium BCE flourished from the beginning: La Venta, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan and Tres Zapotes. It is unknown how the bearers of this culture called themselves or were called by their contemporaries.

At the time of the Aztecs ( 14th to early 16th century AD ), ie 2,500 years later, this landscape inhabited by a people who were called by the Aztecs as Huixtotin - Olmec. This name was the first to 1929 Marshall Howard Saville, director of the Museum of the American Indian ( Heye Foundation) in New York, on the culture of the mentioned sites to. However, there is no evidence that the aztecs temporal Olmekenvolk would actually have been the descendants of those people who centuries, the so-called " Olmekenkultur " had previously created.

History

Their centers of La Venta, Tres Zapotes and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan were on the southern Gulf Coast of Mexico in the present-day states of Tabasco and Veracruz. The high rainfall in this area allowed them a year-round intensive maize cultivation. The origins of their culture, however, are to be found in the Mexican highlands ( Guerrero ) and go back in time to around 1500 BC. Against 400 BC, the last major Olmec centers were destroyed.

The people of the Olmec was last replaced gradually by the younger aspiring Maya culture, and finally absorbed completely.

Arts and Culture

The Olmecs were often regarded as the carrier of the mother culture of Mesoamerica. The beginnings of writing and calendar accounts and the ball game and the construction of temple pyramids in America are attributed to them. The culture radiated to the later cultures of the Maya in the east and the Zapotec in the West. The discussion about the mother culture but this has now subsided, as there is no sufficient evidence that the Olmecs have actually brought a large area under their rule. Due iconographic similarities over large parts of Mesoamerica time ( cf. Monte Alto culture) but trade relations can be assumed that also spread representational conventions.

Although they were unknown metal tools, the Olmecs are considered masterpieces of stone processing. They created excellent large sculptures in the shape of the famous colossal heads as well as a wide range of small sculptures: altars, human and zoomorphic figurines and ornaments made ​​of obsidian and jade. As a typical motif appears again on the so-called Jaguar man (also Werjaguar ) whose shape combines features of a man and a jaguar. The typical colossal heads of the Olmecs consist largely round basalt bombs that were spewed from the extinct volcano Cerro el Vigia millennia ago; they fall on a mix of Negroid ( lips and nose) and Asian (eyes) facial features. All bear a more or less ornamented cap-like headgear; sometimes the ear lobes are pierced with stakes and tied the hair into small braids. It is believed today that these heads represent rulers, warriors and other important personalities, but are to be regarded in any case as individual figures.

Font

In 2003, appeared in San Andrés on the Mexican Gulf Coast on a olmekisches to about 650 BC cylinder seal dated using writing-like symbols. However, most scientists view this as not a real font.

However, already was salvaged by chance at a road construction engraved stone block 1999 near the village of Cascajal (north of San Lorenzo). Only in 2006, it turned out that this so-called Cascajal stone hitherto oldest glyphs of the ' New World ' maps. According to the findings of archaeologists Carmen Rodríguez Martínez, Ponciano to Ortíz Ceballos by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia is in the glyphs to an unknown olmekisches writing system, which can be dated to about 900 BC and has all the characteristics of a true writing system. Even Hardcover language the scientists want to have recognized it. The 62 glyphs of the stone consist of 28 different characters, of the twelve -pound Cascajal - stone consists of serpentine, and is 36 x 31 x 13 cm in size. The surface of the stone is concave. This points to the unprecedented technology that Written knocked off several times and the stone was re- labeled.

Mythology

The Olmecs have - left no documents of their mythology - unlike the Maya; in other words, Götterbildnisse missing. Therefore, based interpreting their ideas on the ruins of their monuments and to compare with other Mesoamerican cultures as well as analog circuits. It is recognized, however, that they influenced the subsequent civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, to a great extent.

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