by Peter Watson
One candidate for a ‘mother culture’ was identified in 1925 on the island of La Venta, located in a coastal swamp served by the Tonala River, which discharges on to the northern shore of lowland Veracruz, in the Gulf of Mexico. It was there that the Danish archaeologist Frans Blom and his ethnographer colleague, Oliver La Farge, first observed an earthen mound more than eighty feet high, where, they discovered, there were massive throne-like monuments carved in stone with human and feline figures. At first it was assumed that this site was a variant of the Mayan culture, several sites of which had already been discovered to the east of the narrow Mesoamerican isthmus. But then the German scholar, Hermann Bayer, identified them as ‘Olmec’ because, he said, they came from Olman, the ancient Aztec ‘Rubber country’ more than 300 kilometres away.2 With this change in perspective, it eventually became clear that there was a distinctive ‘Olmec’ style in regard to the statues and jade artefacts that could be found in and around La Venta. They were not Mayan and, again to begin with, archaeologists assumed they must be a later variant.
It was not until Matthew Stirling, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, excavated at Tres Zapotes, further west, on the very fringes of Mayan territory, in 1938, that the antiquity of what would become the Olmec civilisation was fully understood. Among the monuments he discovered was one, now known as Stela c, which had a jaguar face on one side and a date on the other side, which placed it at 31 BC, newsworthy because that was long before the rise of Mayan culture. As Fagan tells the story, Stirling’s dating caused a great controversy in the archaeological profession, for it suggested that the Olmec, instead of being a later manifestation of the Mayan, were in fact much earlier. Undaunted, Stirling transferred his attention to La Venta, where he made a whole raft of further discoveries. These included four massive stone heads, each weighing several tons, yet more thrones adorned with carved figures that were half-feline and half-human, and a spacious ceremonial centre made up of pyramids, temples and wide plazas that had been lined with still more stone sculptures.
These discoveries were made in the years before radiocarbon dating had been invented (in 1947) and for a time the antiquity of the Olmec continued to be a matter of dispute. But then, in 1955, charcoal samples at La Venta were dated to between 1110 and 600 BC.3 For a time after that, the Olmec culture was regarded, by some archaeologists at least, as the ‘mother culture’ of Mesoamerica, far older than any of the other civilisations that had been uncovered there. Not many archaeologists share that view any longer but that does not detract from the fact that the Olmec culture was the first urban civilisation to develop in Central America.
WATER, RAIN, TEARS
Today, hundreds of Olmec sites are known, but only a handful have been properly excavated, the best known being San Lorenzo, La Venta, Chalcatzingo, El Manatí, Laguna de los Cerros and Tres Zapotes. San Lorenzo and La Venta, the first sites to be explored, are a little less than forty miles apart (a hard day’s travelling on foot). The first gravel platforms were constructed at San Lorenzo in roughly 1500 BC and, judging by the stone materials found there – basalt, greenstone and obsidian – the inhabitants of San Lorenzo, who were quite numerous for a few centuries, traded far and wide. Around 1250 BC, they developed a highly distinctive form of pottery, made of kaolin (a clay found in tropical regions, often coloured white or orange and used to make fine ceramics), plus a no less distinctive monumental sculpture, two traditions that emerged ‘fully grown’, so to speak, with no apparent antecedents in Mesoamerica.4
By 1150 BC San Lorenzo was flourishing: its pottery and stone carvings were found all over its hinterland, as far away as Chalcatzingo, 250 kilometres to the north. At that time the city itself had its own imposing ceremonial centre, based around a large platform rising more than 160 feet above the surrounding river basin. In addition there were a number of small pyramids and what the excavators believe was a ball court, perhaps the first to be built in Mexico. The ball court is an institution entirely unknown outside the New World – it is discussed in chapter 21.
Several mysteries remain. One is why, as the excavator of San Lorenzo, Michael Coe, from Yale University, suspects, the San Lorenzo ceremonial complex was built in the form of a huge bird, flying east. Another is why the ceremonial centre itself was never completed, not before the city went into rapid decline, beginning about 900 BC and completed 200 years later. And third, most mysterious of all, perhaps, is that the ceremonial centre contained eight colossal stone heads, each much taller than a man, weighing many tons and using basalt stone mined nearly fifty miles away. Some archaeologists believe that these heads – which famously have flat noses, leading some to think they are of Negroid peoples who reached Mesoamerica very early, and wear helmet-type headgear – are portraits of select individuals, elite rulers of a society where social stratification first emerged. We shall see in just a moment what this implies.
La Venta was slightly later than San Lorenzo: it did not become a major centre until around 1000 BC. It too had colossal heads (weighing 11–24 tons) overlooking a number of mounds and plazas, but in addition it had elaborate tombs for burying important personages, accompanied by extravagant offerings. Here the portrait carvings have been badly mutilated, which may mean that it was eventually sacked by rivals (or it was done deliberately, to prevent the ‘power’ of these objects being abused). One of the colossal heads at La Venta has been paired icono-graphically with another at San Lorenzo. The La Venta head holds a cord or rope that binds what looks like the San Lorenzo head, which could mean either that these two dignitaries were related in some way, political or religious, or that the San Lorenzo figure was captured by the La Venta personage.
Recent research has found that the emergence of elites in Olmec society was based on agriculture, which enabled that elite to provide food for their subjects. But the exact form of agriculture was quite complex – more sophisticated than at first appeared. There were in fact two types of agriculture practised in Olmec territory. The first was used in the low uplands, near the main settlements, which produced both maize and manioc crops twice a year, in both the wet and dry seasons. But the Olmec also employed a type of fertile garden located on the natural levees of the rivers, which were flooded and refertilised by the summer rains. These provided high yields year after year.
The two things that stand out at these Olmec sites are the emergence of elite figures and the associated jaguar themes. Five throne-like stone blocks were found at La Venta, each depicting a seated figure, probably a ruler, half-hidden in a niche in the stone, each holding ropes that link him to other seated figures that could be relatives or captives. These ‘block thrones’ are also decorated with stylised jaguar figures which, the archaeologists say, may have symbolised the supposed jaguar origins of the Olmec, a similar theme to that found in South America. As we shall see, the later rulers of the Maya also sat on jaguar thrones.
The jaguar theme was also widespread among the objects found in the La Venta pyramid, part of the ceremonial complex which, some of the excavators believe, is itself in the form of a stylised jaguar head. The offerings found in the pyramid include jade jaguar masks, a mosaic of serpentine blocks also believed to represent a jaguar face, and other figurines in jade and serpentine – bald, with slanting eyes and drooping mouths, which some think show humans in the process of turning into jaguars (see figure 11).
Fig. 11 Were-Jaguar figurine of serpentine, with snarling feline face, possibly representing a masked dancer or shaman transforming into a jaguar.
The distribution of Olmec-style artefacts, thought to have been fairly restricted at one stage, is now known to have extended as far as the Pacific coast, with human figurines and jaguar sculptures discovered at a score of sites stretching from Tehuantepec in Mexico to El Salvador.5 Chalcatzingo, in Morelos, seems to have been a distribution way-station for various substances that did not occur in Olmec territory but were much valued. It may well have been through Chalcatzingo that the developing Olmec elite reinfo
rced their position, importing luxury objects in obsidian or greenstone. In return, Chalcatzingo showed a strong Olmec influence, not only in the artefacts produced there but in a number of enormous bas-reliefs carved into rock faces.6 The most striking of these shows a member of the elite seated on a throne inside a cave that appears to be in the form of a stylised jaguar’s mouth. Rain clouds emanate from the cave mouth, perhaps an allusion to the breath of the jaguar-god which brings rain. Jaguar figures are found everywhere in Chalcatzingo, not just in the open ceremonial centres but also in the caves in the nearby mountains where the greenstone was mined.
As Fagan also points out, Olmec rulers were the first in Mesoamerica to record their dominance in enduring form and as the colossal statues, carvings, pottery and intricate figurines make clear, the dominant ideology among the Olmec was based on the relationship between humans and jaguars (reliefs of adults carrying jaguar babies, stone axes in the form of half-humans/half-jaguars, rock carvings showing felines attacking humans, see figure 10). The jaguar was feared and admired in equal measure, feared because of his great strength and cunning, for the fact that he controlled the rainforest at night as much as in the day. He was admired for his (supposed) sexual prowess (few can have seen the jaguar ‘in action’, so to speak), and his mastery of all environments – water, land and the ‘upper world’ of the trees. ( Jaguars have been observed to attract fish by tapping the surface of a river with their tails.) They were particularly associated with rain and fertility, their roar regarded as a kind of thunder, announcing rain.
As mentioned earlier, several Olmec figurines appear to show humans turning into jaguars with snarling mouths and this has been taken to confirm that Olmec rulers were shaman-kings, elite individuals who, under hallucinogenic trance, could transform themselves into jaguars, from which humans were originally formed. Excavations have shown that species of Physalis were grown in some Olmec regions. Being part of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, this plant can have hallucinogenic properties. These shaman-kings controlled rain and floods by communication with supernatural jaguars. Other objects include whistles, which may have been employed ritually or, as ocarinas, used musically. They were generally carved into animal forms, birds or monkeys, for example.7
Recent studies have confirmed the shamanistic nature of Olmec ideology, and that their rulers served shamanic as well as political functions, being seen as representatives of the World Tree, the evidence being found on cave murals at Oxtotitlán and La Venta’s Altar 4, and incised on stylised celts or ceremonial axes.8 Cleared areas have been found in the rainforests of El Manatí which are believed to have been sacred spaces where the houses of shamans were located.
At the same time, new ideological elements were introduced in Olmec settings which were to endure – albeit in much modified forms – for two thousand years and more.
Excess water – swamps, lakes and frequent inundations – was a problem for the Olmecs, rather than water shortage, as it was (and is) in so many other parts of the world. This led them to construct great drainage systems and to devise various cults to ensure a balanced rainfall, devoid of inundation that would destroy the harvest. The ceremonies of these cults often took the form of placing axes at the highest point of the house, with the cutting edge pointing at the sky.9 It was believed that the Lord of the Storm, the Master of Lightning, possessed an axe with which he felled trees in the forest. Obsidian was called ‘lightning stone’ and where it was found, there it was believed that lightning had struck. (Shamans were known as ‘men of hail’ in Veracruz.) Ceremonial axes and other objects, such as masks, were thrown into cenotes, natural fresh-water cisterns, in an attempt to control the rains. Rain gods were to prove important to later Mesoamerican civilisations.
Associated with the water cults were further cults of hills and pigmented stone, such as haematite, and when the springs were located in what were seen as sacred mountains (as one of the sources of water), such sites could become cult centres, not lived in but used as places of pilgrimage and worship. There is evidence from some of the objects thrown into springs and cenotes that the worshippers had followed a special diet in their efforts to maintain greater ties with nature.10 The bones of neonates were also thrown into springs, after being dismembered. To Ponciano Ortiz and María del Carmen Rodríguez, Mexican anthropologists, this suggests ritual cannibalism, further supporting the idea of cult members following a special diet.11 More than one Spanish chronicle from Conquest times described child sacrifice as a common practice in Mesoamerica related to water and fertility – infants’ tears being regarded as akin to rain. Child sacrifice has been practised in many areas of the world, so one need not suppose that the Olmec had in any way ‘inherited’ this tradition from the Chinchorro, referred to above, in chapter fifteen.
There was an overlap in Olmec ideas between rain and maize deities. Maize was not a staple part of the Olmec diet in all areas (such as La Joya). As we noted in chapter eleven, it took a long time to fully domesticate teosinte and its earliest uses were for beer rather than to make corn. But, beginning around 900 BC, maize did begin to take hold in some areas of the Olmec heartland and as a result, societies, some of which may already have been sedentary, began to build up agricultural surpluses. As a consequence of that, wealth grew, social stratification appeared, art proliferated (presumably with the development of specialist craftspeople) and maize symbolism was produced.
To the Olmecs, the human body served as a model of the cosmos and so the maize god was shown associated with the tree of life, the cardinal directions (related to the axis of the sun’s movement), and to other precious materials, such as jade or jadeite and quetzal feathers. The deity was often shown with a human head, sometimes a birds’ head, sometimes the head of other animals.
The association with quetzal feathers is particularly interesting. The quetzal is the most spectacular bird of Mesoamerica and its long green tail feathers were especially prized. (The word, quetzalli, in Nahuatl, means ‘large brilliant tail feather’.) The colour green linked feathers, jade and maize as a symbol of fertility.
And it was in this context that is seen the first glimpse of an image, a concept, a sacred idea that was to become very powerful in Mesoamerica. This is the appearance of the plumed serpent, an image that may have two origins, not necessarily contradictory. We have seen that the Olmec faced problems with excess water. In such an environment, snakes would have been more in evidence than elsewhere. At the same time, the rattlesnake tail in particular is seen as similar to the ear of corn. Both these factors would help explain the conjunction but it also appears true that serpents may have been present far more in Olmec iconography than previously thought. In a paper published in 2000, David C. Grove, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reinterpreted a number of images – cave carvings, paintings, figurines – which had previously been understood to depict jaguars as in fact showing serpents. (This is not as unlikely as it sounds: Mesoamerican art is – or can be – highly stylised.) There are still plenty of Olmec images that are undoubtedly jaguars but if Grove is right, the jaguar becomes less important at this time and the serpent begins to establish more of a presence in the iconography and its association with maize and quetzal feathers is also begun.12 In the plumed serpent, therefore, we see a maize stalk (the fertile plant of the surface of the Earth), a serpent (identified with the underworld and life-giving water), and the bird (identified with the heavens, in the sky). We have, in effect, an updated World Tree.
Allied to this are a number of images known to archaeologists as the ‘Earth monster’. This is usually shown as a huge mouth, square or square-cruciform. Here, the Earth is represented as both a huge devourer and creator of life, consuming the sun every day, as it does seeds, and then producing a new sun every morning, as it produces corn after the seeds have ‘disappeared’. To people living in an evidently flat world, and unaware of the notion of orbits, the sun’s apparent trajectory would have been miraculous and the appearance of pla
nts after their seeds had been ‘devoured’ by the Earth an analogous miracle.13
One other change in Olmec iconography has also been observed and dated to 1150–850 BC. Richard G. Lesure, at the University of California, in Los Angeles, finds an important evolution in the pottery of that time, when we see a transformation from zoomorphic imagery – mainly animal heads – to more abstract designs: lines, curved lines, wavy lines, flame-type images. Lesure observes that the animal effigies depicted on the earlier bowls were the creatures that villagers would come into contact with every day. ‘Adults killed them, skinned them, ate them. Children poked at them with a stick.’ After ~1000 BC,onthe other hand, he offers the suggestion that the more abstract designs referred to supernatural entities, imagined as ‘fantastic creatures bearing traits drawn from various animals. The subjects of zoomorphic representations changed from the creatures of everyday existence to those of special, numinous experiences; there was a shift from the ordinary to the extraordinary.’14
He says it is important not ‘to go overboard’ with this observation, and that it doesn’t occur everywhere in Olmec territory, but he does suggest that the new designs are evidence of a shift in symbolism to a higher-order cosmological concept, one possibility being that people found it increasingly important to signal their membership in large-scale groups or social categories. In support of this he says zoomorphic images were invariably placed on bowls to be used by single individuals, whereas the later more abstract motifs were more likely to be placed on family-sized bowls.15