Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About the Olmecs

Three Big Things:

1.The Olmec are generally considered the foundational civilization of Mesoamerica – the region now hosting southern Mexico and Central America. They were the cultural forefathers of later, more familiar peoples like the Mayans and Aztecs.

2. The Olmec seem to have built the first pyramids in the Americas, played the first organized ballgames, and been the first to process and enjoy… chocolate. 

3. The Olmec left behind some heads. Big stone heads. Really, really big stone heads.

The Basics

The Olmec dominated Mesoamerica from around 1200 BCE to 400 BCE, an era that experts on such things call the “Formative Period” of Central America. Subsequent civilizations would manifest Olmec elements for many centuries – their crafts, their games, their gods – making it particularly maddening how little is actually known about them with any certainty. It was long thought they’d somehow managed such longevity and influence without a written language, although more recent discoveries of decorative inscriptions suggest that – in keeping with traditional definitions of “civilization” – they did, in fact, write stuff down.

Now if only someone could figure out how to read it.

Further complicating matters is the absence of human remains. The rainforest decomposes and absorbs the dead rather efficiently, so while archeologists have uncovered some interesting accessories and other goodies, it’s difficult to speculate with any accuracy as to what the Olmec ate, how they died, what diseases they most often endured, etc.

What CAN be said with some certainty is that the Olmec were an important trading partner with surrounding peoples as far north as Mexico City and as far south as Nicaragua. Traditional scholarship says they were the leading civilization of their millennium, the “mother culture” of Central America. More recently, however, a number of rebellious young academic-types (probably brought up on too many History Channel docu-dramas) insist this to be a distortion based on too many inferences from too little evidence.

While the Olmec were certainly important, they argue, they were more of a “sister culture” – interacting with equally significant, if less-researched, contemporaries. This “mother-sister” debate is heady stuff among ancient historians and their ilk – right up there with “Who did Cain marry?” and “Did Han really shoot first?” It can get rowdy in those academic journals and conferences of theirs.

The Olmec, like other ancient civilizations, flourished thanks to geographical good fortune – fertile soil and ample water. Crops like corn, beans, and various nuts were nutritious and plentiful, and fishing in the Gulf of Mexico would have supplemented them nicely. Agriculture allows surplus, and surplus allows specialization, urbanization, and centralization of power into a government able to compel labor and coordinate large-scale projects – infrastructure, public services, even monumental architecture of various sorts.

Or, say… giant stone heads. You don’t get big ol’ heads like that without strong central government. You just don’t.

Pyramids, Sports, and Chocolate

The name “Olmec” isn’t what this elusive society probably called themselves; it was bestowed by the Aztecs centuries later, and literally means “rubber people.” As potentially entertaining as such a moniker could be, it’s most likely a reference to the Olmec’s legendary skill at extracting latex from native trees and brewing it into various sorts of rubber. One product was the hard, heavy ball they used to play a game whose name we also don’t know, but which seems to have been a combination of soccer and quidditch, minus the fake injuries or flying brooms. It’s also the oldest known example of organized sports in all of world history–so there’s that.

Another first was the Olmec love of chocolate. They drank this delicacy as far back as 1900 BCE, before they were even a presence on the world stage. Cacao beans require extensive processing before consumption, and taste very little like what the average westerner thinks of as “chocolate” today. After being ground into powder, they were mixed with a variety of things, from flowers or honey to maize or chili peppers. Ideally, the result was then stirred into hot water and whipped into a froth before joyfully imbibing.

These magic beans became valuable trade items, and those prosperous enough to afford such luxuries had special cups from which to partake and presumably their own little procedures as to how to best enjoy the experience. Then as now, there’s nothing so tasty or fun that the privileged can’t turn it into an elitist ritual. (See “golf,” “caviar,” and “table manners.”) There’s even evidence of “counterfeit” cacao beans, which seem to have been hollowed out and filled with sand. Imagine having THAT kind of time on your hands.

Speaking of conspicuous consumption, the Olmec also developed (independently of their counterparts across the ocean) a more traditional expression of personal or political power – pyramids. Archeological evidence suggests that the Olmec were the first civilization in the western hemisphere to bury their dead in or under such structures. The practice seems to have evolved out of the humbler and more universal practice of enshrining the deceased under their own homes, with survivors moving somewhere less… cadaverous. Over time, those so able built bigger and bigger tributes to themselves, and eventually something akin to the Egyptian pyramids – although smaller and most likely stepped rather than smooth – became a thing among the Kochs and Kanyes of the day.

Those Big Stone Heads

The first of the famous Olmec heads was discovered in 1862 by a farmworker in Veracruz while plowing. Since then, sixteen others have been uncovered. They run from three to nine feet high and weigh tens of thousands of pounds. Each is carved from a single boulder of basalt, a volcanic rock which must have been brought from many miles away over difficult terrain – again a function of hegemonic leadership.

Each head is uniquely detailed, and they were probably brightly painted; such intense labor and attention strongly suggesting that specific rulers were being memorialized. Most wear leather headgear of the sort used in the ballgames described above, although whether this reflects a Putin-ish obsession with token manliness or the hats doubled as military gear is uncertain. Their facial features are similar to those of locals living in the region today.

These aren’t the only artistic works left behind by the Olmec; they did smaller carvings in jade and other materials, and even left us a few cave-paintings. Their art displays a serious reverence for jaguars and an appreciation of snakes and birds-of-prey. “Were-jaguars” combined human and feline features, while a recurring baby-human-jungle-cat combo looks particularly ominous.

The Olmec worshipped at least a dozen different gods, each with their own distinctive features and functions. As with many early civilizations, crops and fertility were a recurring theme. Research on the Olmec continues, and while there are plenty of theories, there is as of yet no persuasive narrative tying together the abundance of known miscellany. One can only wonder if the Olmecs had any idea they were leaving behind such an intriguing mess of mysteries. Or, if they did, whether the idea that we’d care about them so much, thousands of years later, would this have given them, um… big heads.