The Olmec culture

The Olmec culture arose three millennia ago on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and the existence ceased in the first centuries of our era, organically merging into the later cultures maya and the Aztecs. Its name is "olmecs" received from the Aztecs and it means "rubber people". All because on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Aztec-derived Olmecs produced rubber. The culture of the "Aztec" Olmecs and the ancient Olmec culture are not at all the same. The ancient culture of the Olmecs is also called the "mother of cultures" of Central America.

In Europe, the Olmec culture became known in 1529, thanks to the works of the monk Bernardino de Sahaguna. Sahagun learned that the Olmecs were once a "significant people" who practiced human sacrifice, and very rich in gold, silver, turquoise and nephritis, and the supreme power in their country, Olmecan, belonged to the high priest. But, the real interest in Europe Olmec culture caused only in the 1930s, when the expedition of the Smithsonian Institution under the leadership of Matthew Sterling began to work on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Today it is established that the four main centers of the Olmec culture were Tres-Zapotes, La Venta, Cerro de las Mezas and San Lorenzo, located in the present state of Veracruz and Tabasco.

It turns out that the Olmec culture knew the wheel, but like the Maya, it was not used in its economic practice! The main branches of the Olmec economy were agriculture and fishing. To our days have survived the remains of the cult buildings of this civilization - altars, sarcophagi, stone steles. The Olmecs did not build stone temples and palaces, but they carved massive sculptures from the stone. All of them are carved from basalt monoliths or other durable stone. On the Olmec stela, you can see the scenes of meeting two distinctly different human races. One of them is Africans, and the other bearded white people are clearly Semitic. Some sculptures depict huge heads with negroid features, known today as the "Olmec head", up to 2,5 m high and weighing up to 30 tons, hewn out of a monolithic block of basalt. This is almost a portrait of Africans. In addition, basalt altars were found, carved into a stone block-monolith and ornate stone sarcophagi.

But how could Africans in the New World come to Columbus? Maybe they were among the indigenous inhabitants of America? Maybe it happened during one of the migrations to the territory of the American continent during the last glacial period around 15000 BC? The voyages of Tour Heyerdahl and Tim Severin, proved that contacts of the Old and New World could take place long before Columbus.

The Olmec culture highly valued the nephrite stone and in its carving along it reached no less perfection than the Chinese. Interestingly, archaeologists have found many jade heads of people and these people are typical Mongoloids, very similar to the Chinese.

The Olmecs had a written language - the oldest known writing of the American Indians. It was hieroglyphic and close later Maya writing: about 35 percent of all Olmec characters are archaic Mayan variants.

Unfortunately, nowhere has it been possible to find any trace of how the Olmec culture was born, as if this culture had already emerged. None of the Indian tribes who lived in Mexico in the era of the appearance of the first Europeans, can not be descendants of the Olmecs, and none of the known Indian languages is similar to the Olmec. It is only clear that the ancient Olmec culture was the same "corn civilization" as the rest of the pre-Columbian cultures of America.