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Olmec Sculpture
Around 1200 B.C., the Olmec civilization appeared in southeastern
Mexico. Over the next several hundred years, its culture spread into
the Valley of Mexico and into parts of Central America. The Olmec
are especially known for their huge sculptures of heads and their
small, finely crafted stone carvings. Much of their art reflects a
fascination with the jaguar.
Jaguar Figure
The Olmec created many carvings of beings that were part human, part
jaguar. Peter Furst, in “New Light on the Olmec” in National Geographic,
explains why: “You can almost call the Olmec the people of the jaguar.
In tropical America, jaguars were the shamans [medicine men] of the
animal world, the alter ego [other identity] of the shaman.” Olmec jaguar
art greatly influenced later Mesoamerican cultures.RESEARCH LINKSFor more on Olmec
art, go to classzone.com
Olmec Head
The Olmec Center at San
Lorenzo, Honduras, contains
several huge carved heads.
Some of them are 9 feet high
and weigh about 40 tons. The
heads may be portraits of
Olmec leaders or of players in
a sacred ball game. The stone
used for the sculptures came
from a site more than 250
miles away. The Olmec
transported this stone over
mountain ranges, rivers, and
swamps.▲▲