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The Wrestler
Las Bocas
One of the Colossal Heads
Figure 31 |
Of
the many places that have been excavated in the region of the costal
region of Veracruz, three places have proved to be particularly
important: La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and San Lorenzo. They are all largish
sites showing various stages of urban planning, rather vague at the
last-mentioned two but quite distinct at La Venta, where it is not only
precise but clearly antecedent to future Mesoamerican cities.
Mounds-once topped by temples-were built around plazas in a regular
pattern. Furthermore, the whole ceremonial area was ranged along a central
axis running very nearly north-south. This imaginary line of LaVenta was
to become a real line-a street- in the case of Teotihuacan in the
highlands. Thus, not only had the planned city been devised by about
800B.C., but it had been given the general north-south orientation that
was to become customary later on. This laying-out of cities in relation
to the cardinal points is highly characteristic of ancient Indian
thought and exemplifies one of the basic traits of their civilization:
ceremonialism, a positive mania for order and ritual which pervades it
from the start. This feature alone would be indication enough that
with the Olmecs we already have the emerging pattern of Mesoamerica and
not simply a tribal society. The Olmecs carved a large number of
statues in the round resembling human beings, or of men with animal
features, mainly jaguar. All these human figures together with the
smaller figurines in jade or stone, besides representing a major
aesthetic achievement, give us a general idea of what the Olmecs looked
like. Owing to the extreme acidity of the soil not a single skeleton has
been recovered in sufficiently good shape to permit anthropological
analysis. Thus we are able to judge their appearance only form their
art.
--Ignacio Bernal--
For other information of the Olmecs one can either go to the search query at the bottom of the page or click below on one of the summaries form different encyclopedias. |
