WHI-Chap6/21-Olmecs

By about the year 3000 BCE, early agricultural villages had spread along the coast of the gulf of mexico in Mesoamerica. These primative villages soon evolved into a major agricultural society that served as the "mother society" for all central american cultures to follow. They used maize as their staple crop and developed the use of large ceremonial centers with temples and elaborate religious ceremonies. The name "Olmec" was not what the people actually called themselves, but merely a name given to them because historians have no record as to what it really was. The term "Olmecs" mean "rubber peoples" coming from the abundance of rubber plants in the area. We are reminded of the Olmecs through the influence they had on later societies and through the large stone heads carved out of solid basalt, possibly statue heads of past kings. They were also expert jade and obsidian carvers and traded throughout Mesoamerica. The principal ceremonial sites of the Olmecs go by the names of San Lorenzo, La Venta, and then Tres Zapotes. They spreaded their empire mostly by military forge, but trade was also an important link. Historians are not entirely sure about the fall of their society which occured in roughly in 400 BCE. Some of their legacy contains the mesoamerican ball game, calendrical inscriptions, and rituals involving human sacrifice.

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