17 MARCH 2019
The Mexican state of Veracruz was named by the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes, who landed at the beach of Chalchihuecan on April 22, 1519. It was Good Friday, which the Spanish also referred to as the day of the Vera Cruz or True Cross.We drove from Veracruz to Palenque via Parque la VentaAarrived and saw the giant Olmec heads up to twelve feet tall. The Olmecs were the first civilization in Mexico, and believed to be descendants of Africans. They lived in the tropical lowlands on the Gulf of Mexico in the present-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
The Olmecs
The Olmecs were an ancient Mesoamerican civilization based in the Gulf Coast of Mexico, in what are now the states of Veracruz and Tabasco. They are also currently the only civilization to have been dated to the Stone Age, prior to the birth of Christ and far ahead of more famous Mayans and the Aztecs. Limited archaeological evidence points towards them having been a reasonably sophisticated, if small, group with a probable class structure and a knowledge of engineering. As far as creativity goes, their aptitude for sculpting and carving (even without metal tools) is evidenced, and they’re also known for producing some of the best artwork in the Mesoamerican era, including technically advanced jade and serpentine carvings predominantly featuring dragons, birds and even were-jaguars. The name Olmec is a Nahuatl—the Aztec language—word; it means the rubber people. The Olmec might have been the first people to figure out how to convert latex of the rubber tree into something that could be shaped, cured, and hardened. Because the Olmec did not have much writing beyond a handful of carved glyphs—symbols—that survived, we don’t know what name the Olmec people gave themselves.
Appearing around 1600 BCE, the Olmec were among the first Mesoamerican complex societies, and their culture influenced many later civilizations, like the Maya. The Olmec are known for the immense stone heads they carved from a volcanic rock called basalt. Archaeological evidence also suggests that they originated the Mesoamerican practices of the Mesoamerican Ballgame—a popular game in the pre-Columbian Americas played with balls made from solid rubber—and that they may have practiced ritual bloodletting.
