The Olmec Legacy

[Music] in 1939 Mathew sterling had just arrived in Veracruz Mexico for a new season of excavations at the site of tres Capote ace sterling was searching for answers about a relatively recently identified civilization in Mexico the Olmec tre Capote days had already been identified as an Olmec site but at the time not much was known about Olmec civilization there was only a delicate consensus about who the Olmec were most scholars assume that this civilization was a fairly recent player in Mesoamerican history and that they would have been contemporary with the classical Maya in the second half of the first millennium CE II it wasn't an unreasonable conclusion at the time remember this was before carbon dating was being used in archaeology and back then the best way to date Mesoamerican civilizations was by stratigraphy or even better by cataloging the dates on their monument inscriptions Stirling however suspected that this civilization was much older unfortunately for Sterling he had no hard proof to back up his theories that is until one day when he chanced upon an incredible discovery a broken Olmec Stila with a partial date inscription although the second half the date inscription was missing he and his wife Marian deduced that the date on the Stila was September 3rd 32 BCE by far the oldest written date ever recorded in Mesoamerica when this was published it was hailed as a great oh wait actually no it was immediately derided by their colleagues as the incredulous result of over enthusiastic speculation everyone insisted that the Olmec civilization could not have been that old bummer but not for long as luck would have it the sterlings would be vindicated in the ensuing decades by carbon dating and later by the discovery of the rest of the Stila by a local farmer which allowed archeologists to verify the sterlings proposed date they had been right all along this discovery stunned the academic world it proved the true antiquity of the Olmec and showed that they were the first major civilization in Mesoamerica last episode we examine the Norte Chico one of the first civilizations of the Americas in it we discussed how the Peruvian coast was a cradle of American civilization and how those pre ceramics civilizations laid important foundations for later andean cultures but Peru was not the only cradle in the Americas in Mesoamerica there was another one on the Mexican coast so just like we did in our last episode let's examine the origins of Mesoamerican civilization by exploring its first great civilization the Olmec many aspects of Mesoamerican culture such as calendars ball games and the Mesoamerican pantheon can be traced back to Olmec influences and these influences were tremendous before we can discuss the Maya the zapotec the Toltecs and the Aztecs we need to examine the Olmec and their contributions to Mesoamerican civilization unfortunately the Olmec left us no discernible written histories nor any oral traditions all that is known about the Olmec comes to us from archeology or from the study of subsequent cultures as much as we know about the Olmec we are clueless about some basic facts like the language they spoke or what they called themselves in fact the name Olmec comes from the word almond a Nahuatl word meaning rubber people rubber was produced by the region's inhabitants as far back as Olmec times all the way until European contact hence the name just keep in mind that Olmec is the name retro actively applied to them by modern scholars it's not a name that they would have used themselves before Olmec civilization arose the people of Mesoamerica had only recently begun living a sedentary lifestyle what made this shift possible was the domestication of crops like gourds squash beans avocados and chilies but above all corn or as we ought to refer to it maze maze was first domesticated in Mexico between 7000 BCE and 6500 BCE and it would change everything as it was cultivated more and more intensively so important was maize to the Mesoamericans that most cultures had a maize deity in some form on an interesting I know maze was originally domesticated from the teosinte plant it's a testament to their agricultural prowess that this tiny grass was fashioned into one of the most important staple crops in the world I mean just look how tiny those cobs are if you aren't very impressed by maize I'd also like to point out that the Olmec were the first civilization to have chocolate so let's take a moment to thank the Olmecs for helping bestow chocolate on this cruel world and then let's get back to our topic by the beginning of the second millennium BCE civilization was beginning to take shape what's fascinating about the development of Mesoamerican civilization is that it occurred very late compared to other early civilizations but when it did it blossomed with astonishing speed archaeologist Brian Fagan sums this up excellently a vast chasm separates the thousands of farming villages scattered throughout Central America in 2000 BC and the sophisticated civilizations that arose with dramatic suddenness only fifteen hundred years later nothing epitomizes that drastic change better than the rise of the Olmec for over a thousand years from 1700 BCE to the end of the first millennium BCE the Olmec were a cultural juggernaut in Mesoamerica despite being largely confined to the Mexican Gulf Coast in the modern states of Veracruz and Tabasco the Olmec exercised an oversized influence over Central America unlike their contemporaries the Olmec were living in large planned urban settlements with elite residences workshops and rich elaborate tombs the best-known of these sites is the city of La Venta which thrived from 900 BCE to 400 BCE La Venta has a planned layout with many temple mounds surrounding a main plaza the main feature of the site is its Great Pyramid it's been badly eroded in the millennia since its construction but surveys and excavations show that it was a large rectangular pyramid with stepped sides much like later pyramids in Mesoamerica these are all features that we're gonna see later in Mesoamerican cities this wasn't just a city of corn farmers although there were a lot of those it was an economic and cultural hub home to merchants artists sculptors priests and a ruling elite levente is not an isolated example other Olmec cities have their own monuments the fact that the Olmec Alika commissioned such huge public works speaks to the sophistication of Olmec society but what exactly were they commissioning well I'm glad you asked let's take a look at Olmec art to find out nothing highlights the Olmec better than their distinctive and recognizable art their most iconic and well-known works are by far their colossal heads even if you've never studied the Olmec you've probably seen pictures of them in a textbook or on TV these heads are gigantic each one is carved from a huge block of basalt the nearest source of this is all the way in the two Shilla mountains which means that they had to not only be carved but moved huge distances remember there are no draft animals in Mesoamerica you can't just strap some oxen and mules to those boulders and tell them to move they could only be moved by human labor the organization an effort to move these from quarries to the cities and ceremonial centers must have been enormous as far as we know they could have been dragged overland or perhaps transported on balsa rafts via the local rivers but no one is certain but what are these sculptures exactly most scholars agree that these heads represent Olmec rulers as each one is distinct and no to portray the same person each head has a helmet or headgear the heads are very recognizable for their realism and their broad facial features like their flat noses and full lips these striking features have actually caused some to theorize that the heads are sculptures of Africans but these theories are rejected by Mesoamerican scholars and I'll have more to say about these views later in total there are 17 heads that have been discovered at various Olmecs sites these range in size from just under 5 feet to 11 feet tall the largest head is over 25 hons to put that in perspective that's more than the weight of two school buses one interesting thing I discovered while making this episode is that there are actually several replicas Olmec heads across the United States if you ever pay a visit to the Field Museum in Chicago City College of San Francisco laymen college at the city of New York the Smithsonian or the University of Texas in Austin you can see one of these replicas pretty cool as impressive as the Olmec heads are they were not the only colossal sculpture crafted by the Olmec they also carved massive stone altars each from a single block of basalt weighing over 40 tons actually the term altar is a bit of a misnomer when these were first excavated they were believed to be altars but experts are pretty certain that these huge blocks were actually Thrones for rulers the reason for this is that there's actually images and sculptures of rulers sitting on these altars each throne contains a niche with a man sitting in a cave either holding a baby with Jaguar features or a rope sometimes both in many later Mesoamerican cultures caves are an entrance to the supernatural world so this imagery is very evocative remember this because caves are gonna come up later in the episode as these monuments show the Olmec were masters at shaping stone and these monuments are only the tip of the iceberg one of the finest examples of Olmec sculpture is the wrestler this seated figure is portrayed in a realistic and dynamic way that is seldom seen in Mesoamerica another important piece comes from a burial in La Venta this group of small Jade figurines were found posed around a central figure in a very striking scene no one is certain what this is depicting but it definitely fires up the imagination is this a scene from Olmec mythology a rulers court or a scene from the deceased life we don't know but it is pretty cool to think about Olmec art is one of the best tools we have in reconstructing their religion and their beliefs when we examine Olmec art with a knowledge of later cultures we can see important religious concepts taking shape remember those babies from the Thrones we just talked about let's take a closer look at those babies abound an Olmec guard usually on the chubby side many of these babies just as the ones on the Thrones have Jaguar features this is a very common theme in Olmec art and scholars call these babies where Jaguars like werewolves but instead a where Jaguar these depict people that are in the process of transforming into Jaguars they have snarling fanged mouths upturned lips and sometimes even claws these images are not just limited to children there are also examples of adult transformations as well as transformations into other animals like birds sharks and crocodiles but where Jaguars are the most common they appear in ritual axes carved from green stone and other materials where Jaguars occupied an important place in Olmec religion and it's believed that some of these where Jaguars are shamans in a state of transformation shamanism was an important element in Olmec and later Mesoamerican religions they are not unique to Mesoamerican culture you can find shamans in many parts of the world even today shamans interact with the spiritual world by taking hallucinogens to enter an altered state of consciousness in this state Olmec shamans could transform into animal spirits and enter the supernatural world and through it influence the real world a shaman might want to influence the growth of crops or the coming of rain to sustain his people shamans were very important people in the Olmec community and it's no wonder that we find so much representation of them in their art however some of these where Jaguars also show us a picture of proto deities that will appear in later Mesoamerican religions one piece that exemplifies this is the laulima figure the sculptures of a man holding yet another we're Jaguar baby but what makes it significant are the inscriptions carved into the man's body it's very hard to see in this picture but there are four icons carved into his shoulders and knees scholars have pointed out that these icons have distinct features later associate with Mesoamerican deities these features are very diagnostic and we can use them to identify specific later deities for example on his right shoulder we have sheep a Totec the god of spring and regeneration he's also known as the flayed God on the left we have what is believed to be the fire God or the fire serpent as he's also known on the left knee we have the god of death on the right knee is the feathered serpent known more commonly by its Aztec name Quetzalcoatl and by the Maya as Kukulcan he's gonna be a big figure in later Mesoamerican religion the cradled infant has been identified as the maize God due to the decorated band above his head here's another image of a where Jaguar maize God these are some of the earliest images we have of the Mesoamerican Pantheon these show that important deities had their origin among the Olmec but gods aren't the only elements of Mesoamerican mythology depicted in Olmec art at the Olmec site of el azul archaeologists unearthed two statues of identical twins for anyone familiar with the Maya creation story the Popol Vuh these identical twins should be ringing a bell these are believed to be the hero twins from the story twins feature very prominently in the heroic literature and art of Mesoamerica but this is one of the earliest examples we have of a depiction of twins again when we talk about Mesoamerican mythology in later episodes think back to the Olmec and think back to this sculpture one final religious practice that appears to have its origin in Olmec culture is bloodletting an intact tomb at La Venta contains a stingray spine and other instruments that many scholars believe were used to draw blood bloodletting or auto sacrifices it's also called played an important role in later Mesoamerican religions by offering up their blood rulers and priests could ritually contact their revered ancestors and ask for their intercession in the spiritual world this was a vital element of kingship during the later Classical period and we're going to see it come up again religion and art were not the only legacy of Olmec culture perhaps one of the greatest Olmec achievements was their use of the Mesoamerican calendar and the Long Count there's a lot of debate over the exact source of the Mesoamerican calendar but the Olmec played a huge role in spreading it across Mesoamerica if you want to learn more about the calendar and its significance you're and look because we've already covered that in a previous episode but I'll just hit the highlights here the calendar was a universal feature of nearly all Mesoamerican cultures and it underpinned all ceremonial and religious life we see this calendar used by the Maya the Miche tech the Aztecs the Zapotecs and others to say it was widespread and successful is an understatement not only that the Olmec also had a written numerical system with which they could write dates we open this episode with one such example this allowed the Olmecs to do something no one else could do to record their history in writing now the ability to write numbers poses another important question usually when counting is being recorded writing usually follows did the Olmecs follow this progression to writing and spread to other areas of Mesoamerica no that's a question fraught with a lot of debate you see writing pops up in the late formative period in multiple places the Olmec Heartland the Valley of Oaxaca and the Maya Highlands but a common ancestors of these scripts is elusive and there's very little consensus over who came first who influenced the other it's very much open for debate during this time Olmec writing was abundant the eppie Olmec were writing elaborate monumental inscriptions the best example is the Lama Hara Stila from the trace of Potter's area this enormous basalt Stila shows a figure most likely a ruler next to a lengthy inscription we can tell from the date inscription on the Stila that it's from the end of the late formative period unfortunately the script remains undeciphered and all attempts to decipher it have been unsuccessful but as cool as that is we need to dig deeper to find the earliest Olmec writing if you want to go back as far as possible to witness the purported origins of writing you'll arrive at the alcohol block that was found near the Olmec city of San Lorenzo it features several rows of higher glyphs although the nature of these glyphs is disputed by some scholars this block dates from about 1000 and 900 BCE but the higher glyphs do not resemble any other Mesoamerican script could this be a proto script or possibly a dead-end it's hard to say but the most compelling artifacts come later from the La Venta area the first we will examine is a cylinder seal found in 2002 that dates to approximately 650 BCE what makes this seal so interesting is that it contains a bird with a speech scroll coming from its mouth that ends in to higher glyphs just like a character in a comic strip these two hieroglyphs are similar to those of later Mayan and Isthmian writing green stone fragments from the site show glyphs with similarities to other scripts as well an Olmec statue found in leblanc on the pacific coast far away from the Olmec heartland shows similar higher glyphs as well with this in mind some scholars believe that there's an argument to be made that writing first originated in the Olmec heartland and then was dispersed throughout Mesoamerica it should be noted once again that these claims are a bit controversial and the matter is not settled any day now a new discovery could easily change how we see the origins of Mesoamerican writing what is clear is that the Olmec were early adopters of writing and helped spread literacy throughout Central America another cultural legacy of the Olmec is the Mesoamerican ballgame the ballgame was a huge fixture in Mesoamerica ball courts were a regular feature in urban design all over Mesoamerica and even beyond if you've ever seen the ruins of a Mesoamerican city you've probably seen the remains of a ball court they're very distinct with their eye shape their walls and the alleyway between them this picture here comes from the ball court at the zapotec capital of monte albán the ball game was not just sport to pass the time it was an important religious ritual that recreated mythology and brought communities together a ball game symbolized the battle between good and evil and life and death and usually culminated in the sacrifice of losing captain or maybe even the losing team like the calendar it's possible that the ball game may have origins outside the Olmec heartland no Olmec site has ever yielded a ball court the oldest known ball court actually comes from the distant Sokka new schoo region however at the Olmec site of El manatee rubber balls have been found dating back to 1500 BC and these are the earliest ever found these solid rubber balls were made by tapping rubber trees and fashioning the rubber into balls for the game this is good evidence that the game was being played by the Olmec from a very early time even if they weren't incorporating formal ball courts into their urban architecture or perhaps they were and archaeology has yet to find them either way the Olmec were among the earliest cultures playing the ball game in Mesoamerica so how do we know that these ideas were spread so thoroughly throughout Mesoamerica you might think it's because we see so many firsts among the Olmec but the real reason is much more interesting it's because Olmec artifacts and sites can be found all over Mesoamerica the Olmec were not isolationists they expanded and traded with their contemporaries all across Central America the Olmecs were producing rubber cacao salt and manufactured goods like fine pottery the items they appeared to be trading for were Jade and serpentine for crafting obsidian for weapons and tools and iron ore for mirrors and this contact wasn't incidental there's a lot of evidence for intense Olmec contact outside the heartland a great example of this is the sight of chalk at Cinco in the valley of Morelos that sheer mountain you see in the picture has long been considered sacred by indigenous peoples and the Olmec may have considered this a sacred site as well between 700 and 500 BCE the Olmec had a strong presence there and left spectacular bass relief carvings into the rock cliffs the location of Chao could sing go also lies about halfway between the heartland and the mountain sources of obsidian it would have behaved the Olmec to ensure that Chao could sing go was on friendly terms another site Te'o pantech wanted lon all the way in the modern state of Guerrero has a ceremonial sunken court flanked with an Olmec style where Jaguar depiction of the maize God Guerrero was an important trading partner with the Olmec because it was a source of high quality Jade so all my presence here shouldn't be that much of a surprise elsewhere in Guerrero the Juche to oaxaca cave features an extraordinary cave painting of a figure holding a captive bound by a rope other nearby caves show Jaguars and even the feathered serpent remember the Thrones we discussed earlier replete with cave imagery these caves likely held a spiritual significance and the art there is not a coincidence other Olmec or Olmec influenced sites can be found in Chiapas the southern Guatemalan coast and even as far as El Salvador now all the specs the question what was the nature of this contact are these sites evidence of a peaceful trading network or a violent entrada there's no doubt that the Olmec had a warrior tradition violence pops up in Olmec art several times but Olmec artifacts could just as easily be the result of trade items brought back from the Olmec heartland nobody really knows but there's a lot of debate on the topic and the real answer could easily be a combination of both what's important about this and what I want you to take away from it is the sheer extent of Olmec contact within Mesoamerica with this contact came the cultural and religious trappings that we've been discussing dr. Michael Koh summarizes this very well where they did not go or where their influence was unfelt civilized life never took hold not even in the two-and-a-half millennia that elapsed between them and the Spanish conquest beyond the frontier of the Olmec realm were the barbarians the people without calendar writing and science without great art without States and civilized centers now before we wrap up this video we need to discuss one last thing that everybody loves conspiracy theories as mezzo america's oldest civilization the Olmec are at the center of many colorful shall we say alternate theories there are scholars who have suggested that Olmec achievements and art were the result of an outside influence most commonly from Africa but you can also read about influences from China and Europe as well some people most prominently among them ivan van Sertoma have suggested that the Olmec colossal heads have African ethnic characteristics specifically those broad noses and full lips and thus it's proof of an ancient African contact with Mesoamerica among the many other points are that Mesoamerican pyramids are derived from the pyramids of Egypt and Nubia I've read several of these and I can assure you that they are painful to read all Mesoamerican scholars that I've read agree that there is no substantiating evidence to these claims experts point out that these African features on the colossal heads are also shared by the indigenous people of the Veracruz region they also point out that Mesoamerican pyramids have a well-documented evolution in history one that is very distinct from the Pyramids of Egypt I also have not seen a shred of genetic or linguistic evidence to back these theories on a lighter note I would also like to add a personal observation that if any African or Asian civilization made contact with the Olmec how on earth did they arrive in the only chocolate producing region of the world and not bring chocolate back to the old world talk about a miss but back to business this kind of speculation is part of a much larger trend there are lots of other conspiracy theories and pseudo scientific literature that'll tell you that some Native American achievement was the result of European African or Asian influence these claims are at best the result of poor research and hurried speculation and at worst deliberate attempts to usurp Native American achievement such theories have very little merit and should not be taken seriously arguing that old world inhabitants may have washed up in America or may have had a single episode of contact is one thing but arguing that there was a sustained transoceanic contact with the Olmec or any other American civilization is baseless speculation fringe theories aside the Olmec were an extremely successful civilization and left a huge impression on Mesoamerica Olmec style are can be found everywhere not only was it prolific it was extremely long-lived Olmec culture lasted over a thousand years but began to finally decline with the abandonment of La Venta in 400 BCE some later Olmec sites most notably tre sapote soldiered on for a few more centuries before Olmec culture slowly faded away replaced by newer civilizations who were now heirs to a towering legacy I hope I've made it clear just how pivotal the Olmec were in spreading the use of the Mesoamerican calendar religion the ballgame and urban design as the Olmec went so did most of Mesoamerica when we cover later topics in Mesoamerica you'll hear the Olmecs popping up again and again and you'll get a real appreciation for their legacy and with that I hope you've appreciated this episode on what many consider to be the mother culture of Mesoamerica thank you for watching and don't forget to Like and subscribe for more ancient American content see you later you

Channel: Ancient Americas

Views: 166,734

Rating: 4.7385058 out of 5

Keywords: olmec, ancient americas, ancient, americas, mesoamerica, mexico, pre-columbian, precolumbian

Id: lSO-bFwMx2I

Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020