Download The World's Greatest Civilizations: The History and Culture of the Olmec AudioBook Free

The Olmec people are widely recognized as the first major civilization of Mexico and are thus generally regarded as the mother civilization of Mesoamerica, making them the people from which all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures derived. In fact the term Olmec is thought to have originated with the Aztec people, as Olmec in their Nahuatl terminology means "the plastic people", a mention of the inhabitants of the land from which they accessed plastic. By and large the Olmec culture is perhaps best identifiable by their so-called colossal heads, mammoth basalt head statues wearing helmetlike headdresses found throughout Olmec habitation sites. Around 2500 BC the Olmec settled mainly along Mexico's Gulf Coastline in the exotic lowlands of south-central Mexico (in the modern-day States of Veracruz and Tabasco), and they flourished during North America's Prehistoric Indian Formative period from about 1700 to 400 BC. Their direct cultural efforts were still apparent as past due as Advertising 300. Among Mesoamerican scholars, the Formative period is subdivided in to the Preclassic (Olmec period), Classic (Maya period), and Postclassic (Toltec and Aztec cycles). The Olmec's agricultural talents sustained them and made certain their electric power and effect for over a millennium. They produced corn/maize, squash, and other herb foods in such volumes that these were afforded the manpower to create great monuments and ceremonial centers to further promote their ethnical identity.

Category: Classics