The geographical region on the American continent, within which a kind of civilization flourished in pre-Columbian times, is designated by the term " Mesoamerica"("Middle America"). It was here that the cultures of the Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas were born, flourished and declined. The heyday of these civilizations I-II millennium AD, the level of their development - bronze age(although the use of metals begins at the very last period their existence), which brings them closer to the civilizations of Sumer and Ancient Egypt.

Arriving in Mesoamerica, the Europeans found four main cultural centers: on the territory of Mexico, the cultures of the Olmecs and Aztecs were formed and developed, Guatemala and Yucatan were inhabited by the Maya people, in Colombia there was a culture of the Chibcha-Muisca tribes, and in Peru - the culture of the Inca tribe. According to scientists, ancient culture, which gave rise to all the rest, was the Olmec. Therefore, for all the peoples of pre-Columbian America, a number of common features are characteristic: hieroglyphic writing, illustrated books, a calendar, human sacrifices, a ritual ball game, belief in life after death, step pyramids. At the same time, the peoples of Mesoamerica did not know the wheel, did not have draft animals (in America there simply were no animals like a horse or a bull that could be domesticated).

Olmec culture

The earliest culture in pre-Columbian America was created by the Olmecs, whose territory of residence included a significant part of Mexico, all of Guatemala and all of Belize. The Olmec civilization reached its peak after 1200 BC. For their time, the Olmecs were the most advanced people in culturally, therefore, they managed to spread their cultural influence over the vast region of Mesoamerica, becoming the mother culture for subsequent cultures of other tribes and peoples. The cultural achievements of the Olmecs include a well-developed architecture. The city of La Venta was built according to a clear plan and oriented to the cardinal points. In the center of the city, the Great Pyramid, 33 m high, was erected, which served as a watchtower, since all the surroundings were perfectly visible from it. The architectural achievements of the Olmecs include the plumbing, made of vertically placed basalt slabs, tightly adjoining each other.

The Olmecs were excellent masters of stone processing. They achieved perfection in jade carving. Using numerous tools - cutters, drills, grinding devices, as well as the appropriate stone processing technique, the craftsmen created beautiful products from basalt, quartz, and diorite. The most famous monuments material culture The Olmecs are giant black basalt stone heads found at San Lorenzo, La Vente and Tres Zapotes. The heads are striking in their size: their height is from 1.5 to 3 m, and it weighs from 5 to 40 tons. Because of their facial features, they are called heads of the “Negroid” or “African” type. These heads were located at a distance of up to 100 km from the quarries where basalt was mined.

It still remains a mystery what the giant heads depicted. One can only assume that they tried to perpetuate the heads of defeated enemies in this way in accordance with the ancient American tradition. In addition, there is a hypothesis that the heads were created in honor of the young men who were sacrificed to the gods. The best young man was determined for the victim by priests from among the ball players and became the personification of the god of maize. Among the Olmecs, the ball game was of a religious and ceremonial nature, and the game was preceded by a complex ritual. The Olmecs believed that the act of self-sacrifice would ensure immortality and all the benefits of eternal life. According to scientists, the most beautiful girls of the settlement, like the best ball-playing boys, who were selected by the priests for sacrifice, went to their death with joy and pride.

In the era of the Olmec civilization, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe four sides of the universe was born, the symbol of which was the St. Andrew's cross inscribed in a rectangle. There is a legend about four eras and a prediction that in the fifth era, along with the acquisition of maize, civilization will perish from the old god of fire and earthquake. The symbol of the fifth era was considered to be a god presenting maize to people, on whose shoulders and knees lie the heads of four other gods - the patrons of the previous four eras.

Period VIII to IV century. BC. considered the heyday of the Olmec culture. In the cities there were stone monuments with calendar dates. Rich ritual centers with a clear orientation and layout had complex initiatory treasures and caches, polished stone mirrors, stelae and altars. The latter give some idea of ​​the clothes of those times, jewelry and other elements of culture.

Unfortunately, the Olmecs did not create durable monuments of their culture, and therefore our ideas about it are fragmentary and fragmentary. Questions about its origins and development processes remain open.

The buildings of the Olmecs did not differ in complex forms, like those of later tribes, however, they were massive and peculiar. There are several features of the architecture of the first American tribe. At the heart of the ancient temples was either a square or a rectangle. By themselves, these structures represented a pyramid.

It is assumed that structures of this form are easier to construct than, for example, cubic, they are higher and more stable. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, the Mesoamerican ones (and the architectural style of the Olmecs was adopted by all the tribes of Central America without exception) were built with stairs leading from the foot to the temple located at the top (usually with two rooms). If the structure was large, not two, but four stairs went upstairs - on all sides of the pyramid. The second type of buildings is the so-called palaces, which were rather residential houses of the nobility. These buildings were also located on small elevations, but inside they were divided into several narrow and elongated rooms. The main totem animal of the Olmecs is the jaguar (according to legend, this tribe originated from the union of the divine jaguar and a mortal woman), which is confirmed by numerous archeological finds, both sculptural and architectural.

amazing archaeological finds.

One of the centers of Olmec culture is the city of San Andres, located about 5 km northeast of La Venta (now part of the city of Villahermosa). During the excavations, an amazing find was discovered that pushed back the date of the appearance of the first writing in Mesoamerica by at least 300 years - this is a fist-sized cylinder made of ceramics, with hieroglyphs depicted on the sides. It was used as a writing tool. The stone heads of the Olmecs, unfortunately, are not as well known as the statues of Easter Island, however, they are also striking, primarily for their monumentality (their weight is about 30 tons, in a circumference - 7 m, height - 2.5 m) and realism . There are several more notable and large Olmec cities: these are San Lorenzo, Las Limas, Lagunade Los Cerros and Llano de Jicaro (the ruins of a basalt processing workshop were found in it). Among other finds, it is worth highlighting sensational children's toys. The fact is that many of them depict various animals on wheels, and for a long time it was believed that the population of pre-Columbian America was not familiar with wheels!

San Lorenzo is one of the first cities in America.

most famous and first main city Olmec - San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo), which existed for 500 years. Historians have come to the conclusion that 5 thousand inhabitants lived here. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to see one of the first Mesoamerican cities. Almost nothing remains of the once largest settlement in America due to terrible weather conditions, gluttonous time and inaction of the authorities, and tourists are much more interested in the Mayans and Aztecs. However, on the territory of San Lorenzo (now the town of Tenochtitlan) is the oldest pyramid in America, whose steps are decorated with a carved image of the bogaguar. Drainage systems, stone heads and a platform for the iconic ball game were also found here. The last structure consisted of two inclined stone walls running in parallel. The game itself took place below, and the audience sat on the walls.

La Venta is an open-air museum.

The best preserved and richest city of the Olmecs is La Venta. San Lorenzo gradually falls into decay and by 900 BC. e. the center of Olmec culture moves south. This is due to aggressive raids (relations between the Olmec tribes were by no means peaceful) and a change in the course of the river, which played one of the defining roles in those days. Goods were delivered along the river, water was diverted from it to ensure the life of people, and, among other things, fish were caught in it, which, along with agriculture, was the main occupation of the Olmecs. In La Venta, there is also a large accumulation of the famous Olmec stone sculptures - huge heads of outwardly Negroid origin, which suggests certain thoughts about the origin of this ancient people. The abundance of such finds is amazing, because there was not a single quarry nearby.

By the time of the heyday of La Venta (starting from the 9th century BC), complex mosaics began to be created in the city, new monumental sculptures were being built - steles and rich burials, created with the help of basalt columns placed close to each other. Sarcophagi, many figurines and decorations were found in these chambers. Most of the finds were transported to the museum of the city of Villahermosa (the capital of the Mexican state of Tabasco), to La Venta Park - to the territory occupied by the ancient city.

Conclusion.

For a long time it was believed that the Olmecs - the first civilization of Mesoamerica - suddenly left their cities and disappeared into in an unknown direction, "how they disappeared through the earth, that the Baltic water." In fact, unlike the same water, which literally went underground, the Olmecs simply left the inhabited area for centuries and began to move north, deep into the continent. The reasons for this could be droughts, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters, which led to the fact that the territory occupied by the Olmecs became uninhabitable. The reason for this, in turn, could be a change in the direction of river beds or their complete disappearance, because water at that time played a decisive role in the life of the population, especially in such a climatically complex territory as Central America (however, for the Maya the lack of water was not an obstacle, but this will be discussed later).

It was not difficult for the Olmecs to find new territories suitable for existence, since during their trading campaigns they had repeatedly visited the settlements of neighboring tribes. The movement of the Olmecs to the north led to the gradual assimilation of this original civilization with other Indian tribes. It should be noted that the history of the Maya lasts almost in parallel with the existence of the Olmecs (the first of the known cities of the tribe - Queyo (Belize) - dates back to 2000 BC), but the Mayan flourishing begins precisely from the moment the Olmecs "disappeared". From this we can conclude that the latter, assimilating with other Indians, as if in exchange for the right to live in a foreign territory, taught their former neighbors and trading partners the social and political system and enriched their culture with their skills. The principles of building a society, writing, astronomy, mathematics - this is only a small part of the knowledge that the Maya and subsequently other Indian tribes of America owe to the Olmecs.

Olmecs — ancient people, who lived in Central America in the XVI - II centuries. BC. in present-day Mexico. They created the first civilization in America, which gave rise to all other Indian cultures of the pre-colonial era. For this reason, the Olmec culture is called in Latin America.

The Olmecs invented the first written language in America, the first calendar and a way to measure time, tamed the dog and the turkey, and were the first to start collecting rubber and cocoa beans.

Civilization originated in the east of the territory of modern Mexico. on the Caribbean coast. Evidence of the stay of the Olmecs is found during excavations in Guatemala and El Salvador.

The origin of the Olmecs and the reasons for the decline of their civilization are unclear. In 1979 Clyde Winters proposed a way to read the Olmec letter, based on the hypothesis of the African origin of this people. Winters admitted the idea that the Olmecs spoke the language of the Malinque family, common in Senegal and Mali. By 1997 Winters deciphered a significant part of the Olmec texts. However, many experts do not share the hypothesis about the African origin of the Olmecs.

About three thousand years ago, an Indian culture arose on the shores of the bay, which was called the Olmec. They were named after the Olmecs - a small tribe who lived in this territory much later in the 11th - 14th centuries. The very word Olmec means rubber people. The Aztecs named them after the area where rubber was produced and where the modern Olmecs lived.

The civilization of the ancient Olmecs dates back to 2 thousand BC. and ceased to exist in the 1st century. AD The most surprising thing is that neither in North America nor in South America, there are absolutely no traces of the origin of this ancient civilization. As if this people appears already established. It is also unknown neither about the social organization of the Olmecs, nor about their beliefs, nor about their language.

Due to the high humidity in the Gulf of Mexico, not a single Olmec skeleton has been preserved. It is known that the Olmec culture was a corn civilization, the main sectors of the economy were agriculture and fishing. There were rituals of human sacrifices. The civilization of the ancient Olmecs was culturally advanced. A lot of figurines made of jade, pyramids, steles, statues have survived to this day.

The biggest mystery among the remaining Olmec monuments are the huge heads carved from stone. The weight of one head reaches up to 30 tons. The faces look very natural and the most interesting thing is that they depict people with negroid features. These are almost portrait images of Africans in tight-fitting helmets with a chin strap. The earlobes are pierced.

The face is cut with deep wrinkles on both sides of the nose. The corners of the thick lips are bent down. It is these facial features that separate the Olmecs from the Indians of all Mesoamerica. This leads to the conclusion that the Olmecs could not be the indigenous population. Then the question arises where they could come from? There is an ancient legend about the origin of the Olmecs. She tells that a mysterious tribe of people arrived by sea and possessed all sorts of magic. Then they settled in a village called Tamoanchane. But one day, the wise men of the arriving people boarded the ships again and sailed away, promising to return before the end of the world.

The remaining people settled the lands surrounding them and began to call themselves by the name of their great leader and sorcerer Olmec Wimtoni. It is interesting that the Olmecs identified themselves with jaguars and considered themselves descendants of the union of the divine jaguar and a mortal woman. So the Olmec tribe appeared, the sons of heaven and earth at the same time.

Who are the Olmecs?

At the end of the II millennium BC. e. sedentary life becomes dominant and ceremonial centers appear on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and in the highlands. The flowering of the culture of the Atlantic coast of the present state of Veracruz, called Olmec, begins. The Aztecs named them after the area on coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where rubber was produced and where the contemporary Olmecs lived. So actually the Olmecs and the Olmec culture are not at all the same thing.

By ancient tradition, The Olmecs appeared on the territory of modern Tabasco about 4000 years ago, they arrived by sea and settled in the village of Tamoanchane. According to the same legend, it is said that the wise men sailed away, and the remaining people settled these lands and began to call themselves by the name of their great leader Olmec Wimtoni.

According to another legend, the Olmecs appeared as a result of the union of the divine animal jaguar with a mortal woman. Since then, the Olmecs considered jaguars as their totems, and they began to be called jaguar Indians.

However, despite all the efforts of archaeologists, nowhere has it been possible to find any traces of the origin and evolution of the Olmec civilization, the stages of its development, the place of its origin. Little is known about the social organization of the Olmecs, and about their beliefs and rituals - except that they, it seems, also did not disdain human sacrifice. It is not known what language the Olmecs spoke, and to what ethnic group they belonged. In addition, the high humidity in the Gulf of Mexico has led to the fact that not a single Olmec skeleton has been preserved, which makes it extremely difficult for archaeologists to shed light on the culture of Mesoamerica's most ancient civilization.

The culture and art of the Olmecs had a strong influence on the culture of other Indian peoples of Central America. Remarkable sculptural monuments; many of them depict a jaguar - the main deity of the Olmecs. The reasons for the disappearance of the Olmecs have not been established; it is assumed that this is the result of large ethnic movements.

The ancient Olmec people lived about three thousand years ago in the territory of modern Mexico, the states of Veracruz and Tabasco.

They were farmers and developed a fairly high civilization, as well as merchants and exchanged their goods with peoples living in distant lands.

The Olmecs were excellent stone craftsmen. They made painted walls, carved tombstones and stone altars, created axes that they used as offerings to the gods, molded small figurines and masks from clay. Undoubtedly, the Olmec civilization became known thanks to unusual monumental sculptures that have come down to our days.

The Olmecs were called the corn people because this agricultural crop formed the basis of their diet. Their daily meal usually consisted of corn tortillas. They also ate beans and pumpkins.

Archaeologists have been able to recover many Olmec household items. The main finds were discovered during excavations in San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes.

Was the jaguar sacred to the Almecs?

The jaguar is a predatory mammal native to South and Central America. It does not attack people and feeds on large game, in particular deer.

The Olmecs greatly valued the jaguars because they ate herbivores that destroyed maize plantations.

The Olmecs had only two domestic animals: a dog and a turkey. The Olmec dogs were similar to the Chihuahua in that they were very small. The Olmecs raised them for food.

The Olmecs were very creative people. They invented a calendar, a form of writing and a system of representation of numbers, as well as a form of government and religion.

The Olmecs did not use fertilizers and did not know irrigation techniques. Farming was very primitive: they sowed the fields until they were fertile and then left them to rest, although in reality the Olmecs were lucky to live in a region with a large number of rivers and therefore it was not necessary to leave the fields to rest for a long time. When the tides were high, the water flooded the coastal lands and fertilized them, so that the fields produced two or three crops a year. In order to know when floods occur and when to sow, the Olmecs invented a means of telling the passage of time, that is, a calendar.

In their study of the passage of time, they arrived at a year of 365 days.

The Olmecs were undoubtedly great sculptors. They worked stone with great skill, creating tombstones and altars decorated with human figures.

The most characteristic are the colossal heads, reproducing, perhaps, the faces of great leaders. These monumental heads were made of basalt, a very hard stone.

Many of these huge heads are kept in the La Venta Archaeological Park in Mexico.

The Olmecs were the earliest civilization of Central America, consisting of many small settlements that flourished along the Gulf of Mexico in central Mexico from 1200 to 600 BC.

The origin of Olmec culture is obscure, with some scholars preferring the theory that it was local farmers who transformed into tribes and later cultural societies, and others that the Olmecs are the result of migration from Guerrero or Oax. A high level of agricultural production has become a key to their success. The Olmec settlements were based mainly on the banks of slow-flowing rivers, which, at times of flooding, nourished fertile alluvial soils.

San Lorenzo, occupied in 1200 - 900 BC, is considered the main settlement of the Olmecs. Along with it, there were two other centers: Tenochtitlan and Portero Nuevo. All Olmec ceremonial centers were platform complexes on which ceremonial palaces, mounds, stone statues and large conical pyramids were based.

Huge stone heads seem to be the most extraordinary product of architectural thought. They reach a height of three meters and, presumably, are portraits of the ruling families and the Olmec elite. To build these things, the labor of the villagers living in the lowland areas was needed.

Trade was a very important business and again concentrated in ceremonial centers, here they exchanged obsidian, serpentine, mica, magnetic iron ore and other materials. There were both local trading networks and networks of a regional scale. Thus, the way of life of the Olmecs and their complex cosmology spread along with the objects of exchange over a fairly large area.

The Olmec priests came up with a 260-day calendar, and a set of beliefs that included a jaguar werewolf and a burning serpent. The Olmec style in art is especially evident in sculpture, it is very realistic in the representation of natural and supernatural forms. Crafts are represented by works made of shells and jadeite.

By 600 BC, the Olmec culture was in decline and the exchange systems were reduced in intensity. But still, thanks to the existence of the Olmecs, the further civilizations of Central America received a good cultural heritage.

Sources: www.vokrugsveta.ru, www.tradiciadrevnih.ru, otvet.mail.ru, pochemuha.ru, secretworlds.ru

Mysterious disappearances. Mysticism, secrets, clues Dmitrieva Natalia Yurievna

Olmecs

The Olmec civilization has undoubted evidence of its existence in the form of archaeological finds. However, the secrets of its origin and death have not yet been solved by scientists. The very name "Olmec" is conditionally taken from the historical chronicles of the Aztecs, where one of the tribes of this civilization is mentioned with this name. The word "Olmec" in translation from the Mayan language means "inhabitant of the country of rubber."

The Olmecs lived in what is today southern and central Mexico. The most ancient traces of civilization date back to 1400 BC. e. In the city of San Lorenzo, the remains of a large (probably main) Olmec settlement were discovered. But there were other settlements, the largest of which were in the places of La Venta and Tres Zapotes.

Many researchers consider the Olmecs to be the progenitors of other Meso-American civilizations, which is also confirmed by the legends of the Indians. It is only known for certain that the Olmecs are one of the earliest cultures of Central America.

According to the discovered artifacts, it can be judged that the Olmecs had developed construction, art and trade. Their pyramids, courtyards (probably intended for some kind of ceremonies), tombs, temples, mounds, plumbing systems and huge monuments in the form of stone heads have come down to us. The first such head was discovered in 1862 near the settlement of Tres Zapotes, after which a research “boom” began regarding the Indian culture discovered in the forests of Mexico (although immediately after the discovery it was believed that this was an “African head”, or, as it is called by this day, "the head of an Ethiopian"). This famous head was only fully excavated in 1939-1940. It turned out that the height of the stone head is 1.8 m, and the circumference is 5.4 m, and this huge monument is carved from a single piece of basalt. It still remains an open question how such a large piece of rock was delivered to the place where the statue is now located, if the nearest basalt deposit is located tens of kilometers from this place (the Olmecs, according to archaeologists, did not know the wheel and did not have draft cattle ). Subsequently, 16 more such heads were found, up to 3 m high and weighing up to 20 tons each. Most scientists are inclined to believe that these heads depicted the leaders of the Olmec tribes. But some modern researchers believe that the giant heads could have been made not by the Olmecs, but by representatives of earlier civilizations: for example, the legendary Atlanteans, while the Olmecs themselves were only descendants of these civilizations and “keepers” of huge statues.

In the first half of the 20th century, Mexican archaeologists discovered the city of Sin Cabezas, which means "Headless". This name was given to the found city by the scientists themselves because of the numerous headless statues located in this ancient settlement. However, some stone giants have survived to this day completely intact. In addition to heads and statues, Olmec sculpture is represented in stone altars and carved stelae, as well as in small jade and clay (rarely granite) figurines depicting people and animals.

Various expeditions that were equipped to search for and study artifacts in the first half of the 20th century led to many new discoveries, however, some evidence of the existence of the Olmec culture was at first erroneously attributed to the Mayan culture due to the similarity of faces.

Archaeologists had to get to the remains of ancient settlements and stone sculptures through the impenetrable jungle, tropical rivers and swamps, climb the mountains: the traces of the ancient civilization were by that time already quite cut off from modern settlements and roads. This complicated the research, but gradually, on the basis of new information, scientists discovered more and more clear picture existence of the Olmec civilization. Stylized masks and human figures carved on steles and stone boxes, according to researchers, are images of gods worshiped by the Olmecs. And in the luxurious tomb found in La Venta, presumably, the ruler of the Olmecs, who lived 9-10 centuries before the Aztecs appeared in these places, was buried. In sarcophagi and tombs, archaeologists found jewelry and figurines, unusual tools.

The Olmec pyramids probably served as temple complexes. They were arranged not according to the "usual" pyramidal shape, but with a round base, from which several rounded "petals" "departed". Scientists explain this form by similarity with volcanic hills that have survived after eruptions: the Olmecs believed that gods of fire live in volcanoes, and temple complexes in honor of the same gods were built in the likeness of extinct volcanoes. The pyramids themselves were made of clay and lined with lime mortar.

The appearance of the Olmecs can presumably be restored from the numerous statues found: Mongoloid-type eyes, flattened nose, plump flattened lips. The sculptures have purposefully deformed heads. More accurate information could be obtained from the remains of the Olmecs found in the tombs, but not a single whole skeleton has been preserved.

According to the Aztec legends, the Olmecs arrived in their habitats by boat from the north coast. In the place where the city of Panutla is now located, they left the boats and went at the direction of the gods to the area of ​​​​Tamoanchan (translated from the Mayan language - “country of rain and fog”), where they founded their civilization. In other Indian legends, there is no explanation for the emergence of the Olmec civilization: it is only said that the Olmecs have lived in those places since ancient times.

According to the Norwegian researcher Thor Heyerdahl, the Olmec civilization could have been brought to Central America from the Mediterranean and Ancient Egypt. This is indicated not only by Indian legends, but also by the similarity of Olmec structures, writing, and the art of mummification with similar evidence of the cultures of the Old World. Such an assumption would explain the fact that during archaeological research no signs of the evolution of the Olmec civilization were found: it seemed to have arisen in an already prosperous form and just as suddenly ended its existence. However, this is also just a guess. Many scientists are still confident that civilizations in different parts of the Earth could develop in a similar way, being in absolute isolation from each other.

The emergence of the Olmec culture dates back to about the second millennium BC. e. According to more recent archaeological research, it may have developed from the early agricultural cultures of Central America, which gradually evolved from nomadic cultures as a result of changing environmental conditions. The oldest nomadic tribes of South and Central America, according to scientists, came from Asia at a time when there was still a land connection between these continents. According to paleoanthropologists, representatives of the Negroid race could also have entered the territory of Central America during the last ice age. This in some way explains the facial features reflected in the giant Olmec heads. Other researchers believe that the ancient Australians and Europeans could have entered the Meso-American territory by water. Perhaps the Olmec civilization appeared as a result of a mixture of people from different continents.

In 1200-900. BC e. the main Olmec settlement (at San Lorenzo) was abandoned: probably as a result of an internal rebellion. The "capital" of the Olmec kingdom moved to La Venta, located 55 miles to the east, among the swamps near the Tonala River. The Olmec settlement at La Venta existed from 1000-600 BC. BC e. or in 800-400 years. BC e. (according to various research data).

The Olmecs left the eastern parts of their lands around 400 BC. e. Among the possible reasons are climate change, volcanic eruptions and the capture of some of the Olmecs by representatives of other civilizations. By the last centuries BC, archaeologists attribute the dates carved by the Olmecs on stone steles and figurines. These are the most ancient written dates found in Central America, older than the writing of the Mayan civilization. When Olmec artifacts with dates were discovered, the researchers, after much debate, came to the conclusion that the Maya borrowed their script and their calendar from the Olmecs.

Interestingly, many stone statues and giant heads belonging to the Olmec culture were deliberately damaged in antiquity: perhaps by the Olmecs themselves. In addition, some sculptures at the same ancient time were clearly moved from their original places or just as purposefully covered with earth, after which the “grave” was lined with tiles or multi-colored clay.

Some studies suggest that the heyday of the Olmec civilization falls on the 1st century BC. e. - I century AD e. It is from this period that all samples of Olmec writing, as well as the most advanced works of art, are dated. Thus, the Olmecs and the Maya coexisted side by side for some time.

Researcher Michael Koe believes that the ancestors of the Maya once lived on the territory of the Olmecs: when the culture of San Lorenzo and La Venta declined, the bulk of the Olmecs moved east and gradually turned into the Mayan civilization. According to other researchers, the Maya and the Olmecs developed simultaneously and, despite the existing family ties between these two civilizations, the Maya cannot be descendants of the Olmecs. The latter assumption is supported by the data of the most recent archaeological research. But in this case, where and for what reason did the Olmecs disappear? This question has yet to be answered by scientists.

After the excavations and discoveries of the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, it became clear that in the first millennium of our era in the swampy and humid jungles on the Gulf of Mexico there was an unusual high culture created by the Olmec people. They built tall pyramids and magnificent tombs, carved massive ten-ton heads of their rulers out of stone, and many times depicted the figure of a ferocious jaguar god on huge basalt stelae and elegant jade objects.

Where the Olmecs came from in Veracruz and Tabasco, whether they were the original inhabitants of these places - we still do not know.

No less mysterious is the death of the Olmec culture, the creators of which suddenly disappeared without a trace from the historical arena seven centuries before Columbus saw the shores of the New World.

Later, in the mid-1950s, when archaeologists began to widely use the radiocarbon method for determining the age of ancient things in their work, the Olmec civilization suddenly received a completely new light.

The fact is that, judging by a series of radiocarbon dates obtained during the excavations of La Venta in 1955, this most important center of the Olmec kingdom existed incredibly early - in 800-400 BC. e., that is, in an era when the cultures of early farmers still dominated other areas of Mexico.

Based on these data, a group of Mexican scientists put forward a hypothesis according to which the Olmecs were the creators of ancient civilization America and had a decisive influence on the origin and development of other civilizations in this area.

In turn, other archaeologists, referring to the unreliability of radiocarbon dates, which often failed archeology in the recent past, defend the idea that the Olmecs as a whole developed in parallel with the rest of the peoples of Central America - Maya, Nahua, Zapotec and so on. Which of them is right - the future will show.

Thus, the problem of the origin and death of a large people who once inhabited the vast territories of southern Mexico still remains the main problem for all archaeologists, for all scientists involved in the ancient history of the New World. There are more than enough bold theories here. But any truly scientific research is based on painstaking work. The work of a scientist is also impossible without elements of fantasy, but the main thing in it is a solid foundation of real facts and evidence.

Beginning of excavations in Mexico.

In the late autumn of 1938, from the port town of Alvarado, which stands on the ocean, near the mouth of the large Papaloapan River, an antediluvian wheeled steamer set off up the river on its next voyage. On board, in addition to ordinary passengers - Mexican peasants, merchants and petty officials - there was a group of people whose clothes and appearance betrayed foreigners in them. American explorer Matthew Stirling - head of the joint archaeological expedition of the Smithsonian Institution and the National geographical society USA - and its few employees, crowded at the side, eagerly examined the rapidly changing exotic landscapes of the tropics. The steamer passed emerald meadows with tall grass and entered an endless green tunnel formed by the spreading crowns of giant trees that closed their branches over the middle of the river. Jungle, endless jungle for hundreds of kilometers around. Either cheerful, strewn with scarlet and white flowers, with the chirping of birds and fervent cries of monkeys, then, on the contrary, dark and gloomy, immersed up to their shoulders in the viscous mud of bottomless swamps, where only snakes and huge iguana lizards patiently wait in the cool twilight for gaping prey.

Finally, after several days of travel, the foggy peaks of the Tustla volcanic mountain ranges appeared far on the horizon, at the foot of which were the ruins of unknown ancient cities. It was they who had to be studied by archaeologists. There, on the fertile lands of the foothills and adjacent plains, many centuries ago, a numerous and industrious people lived and prospered. An impregnable wall of mountain ranges protected this area from fierce hurricanes and winds from the Gulf of Mexico. And fertile soil, even with minimal labor costs, gave unheard-of crops, and, moreover, twice a year.

History of the Olmec region.

What did we know until recently about the past of this region? The notes of the Spanish soldier Bernal Diaz, an eyewitness and direct participant in all the ups and downs of the bloody epic of the Conquista, say that the Papaloapan River was discovered in 1518 by the brave hidalgo Pedro de Alvarado, the future associate of Cortes. At that time, the country was inhabited by warlike Indian tribes who came from somewhere from the west. The formidable legions of Indian warriors, lined up on the banks of the river in strict order of battle, were so impressive that the Spaniards (it was a reconnaissance expedition under the command of Grijalva) hastened to get out.

From ancient Indian legends, we also know that even before the arrival of the conquistadors, the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico was under the control of the great Aztec ruler Montezuma. One of the many duties of the locals was that they had to deliver fresh fish daily to the court of the formidable emperor.

In order to cover this huge distance of several hundred kilometers, fast-footed and hardy messengers were placed along the entire route - both in the jungle and on mountain passes, who, like a baton, passed baskets of fish from one post to another. During the day they managed to run from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

According to other legends, the first inhabitants of these places were the Olmecs (the word "Olmec" literally means "inhabitants of the country of rubber") - the creators of the most ancient civilization of Central America. , were wonderful. Artists, sculptors, stone carvers, feather craftsmen, go-nars and spinners, weavers, skilled in everything, they made discoveries and became able to trim green stones, turquoise ... "
But this prosperity did not last long. Unknown enemies, who came from the west, poured in a black stream on the flourishing cities and villages of farmers. The high civilization of the Olmecs was destroyed, and the green jungle swallowed up what the aliens did not have time to destroy.

It fell to Matthew Stirling and his comrades to open the first page in the study of the mysterious Olmec culture, which was forcibly erased from human memory by the swords of the conquerors and the onslaught of the merciless jungle. In 1939, excavations began on the ancient city of the Olmecs near the village of Tres Zapotes, already familiar to us, in the state of Veracruz.

Olmec civilization. City lost in the jungle

At first, everything was mysterious and unclear. Dozens of artificial hills-pyramids that once served as the foundations for palace and temple buildings, countless stone monuments with bizarre faces of rulers and gods, fragments of painted pottery. And one hint of who owned this abandoned city. The words spoken by the famous American traveler Stephens about another ancient city, lying in the jungle of Honduras, three hundred miles to the south, involuntarily came to mind:
“Architecture, sculpture to painting, all the arts that adorn life once flourished in this virgin forest. Speakers, warriors and statesmen; beauty, ambition and glory lived and died here, and no one knew of their existence and could not tell about their past. The city was uninhabited. Among the ancient ruins, there are no traces of the disappeared people with their traditions passed down from father to son and from generation to generation. He lay before us, like a ship wrecked in the middle of the ocean. Its masts broke, the name was erased, the crew died. And no one can say where he came from, who he belonged to, how long his journey lasted, and what caused his death.

Mystery of stone statues

Nevertheless, archaeologists stubbornly continued their painstaking work, extracting more and more traces of a lost culture to the surface. First of all, the famous stone head was excavated, which, as it turned out, lay only 100 meters from the expedition camp. Twenty workers spent the whole day working around the fallen giant, trying to free him from a deep forest grave. Finally it was all over. The head, cleared of earth, seemed to come from some fantastic, otherworldly world. Despite its impressive size (height - 1.8 meters, circumference - 5.4 meters, weight - 10 tons), it was carved from one stone monolith. Like an Egyptian sphinx, she stared silently with her empty eye sockets to the north, to where magnificent barbarian ceremonies were once performed in the wide city square, and priests offered bloody sacrifices in honor of the ugly pagan gods. Oh, if the stone mouth of the idol could open and he could speak, many of the most interesting pages of American history would become as well known to us as the history of Egypt, Greece and Rome.

But how did the ancient inhabitants of Tres Zapotes deliver this huge block of basalt to their hometown, if the nearest stone deposit is located several tens of kilometers away? Such a task would baffle even modern engineers. And 15-20 centuries ago, all this was done by the Olmecs without the help of wheeled vehicles and draft animals (they, like the rest of the American Indians, simply did not have either), only the muscular strength of a person. Nevertheless, the gigantic monolith, delivered by some miracle - and not by air, but by land, through the jungle, rivers, swamps and ravines - now proudly stands on the central square of the city as a majestic monument to the perseverance and work of the unknown masters of antiquity.

Did the Olmecs invent the Mayan calendar? Sensation

On January 16, 1939, an event occurred in the life of the expedition that eclipsed in its significance all previous discoveries and finds. On this day, Matthio Stirling, with a group of Indian workers, went to look at the newly found stone stele, the edge of which barely protruded from the ground.

They had to tinker a lot before they managed to pull the heavy monument to the surface. “The Indians, on their knees,” recalls Stirling, “began to clean the surface of the monument from viscous clay. And suddenly one of them shouted to me in Spanish: “Señor, here are some numbers!”

These were indeed numbers. I do not know how my illiterate workers guessed this, but there, on the smooth surface of the stele, perfectly preserved columns of dashes and dots were clearly carved - signs of the ancient calendar.

Choking from the unbearable heat, covered in sticky sweat, Stirling began feverishly copying the mysterious inscription. And a few hours later, all the members of the expedition impatiently crowded around the table in the tent of their boss. Complicated calculations followed, and now the full text of the inscription is ready: 6 Eziab 1 Io. According to the European calendar, this corresponded to November 4, 31 BC.

No one dared to dream of such a sensational discovery. On the newly discovered stele (later called “Stela C”), a date was carved according to the Mayan calendar system, which was more than three centuries older than any other dated monument from the Maya region!

And there could be only one conclusion from this: the proud Mayan priests borrowed their amazingly accurate calendar from their western neighbors - the unknown Olmecs.

La Venta is the capital of the Olmecs.

On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, among the boundless mangrove swamps of the state of Tabasco, several sandy islands rise, the largest of which, La Venta, is only 12 kilometers long and 4 kilometers across. Here, near the provincial Mexican village, after which the whole island got its name, the remains of another Olmec city were discovered.
The ancient builders of La Venta knew the laws of geometry well. All the most important buildings of the city, standing on the tops of high pyramidal foundations, were oriented strictly to the cardinal points. The abundance of palace and temple ensembles, fanciful sculptures, stelae and altars, numerous giant heads carved from basalt, the luxurious decoration of the tombs found here indicated that La Venta was once the largest center of Olmec culture, and possibly the capital of the entire countries. Using the calendar dates available on many stone statues, as well as the results of art history analysis, scientists have established that the city's heyday was in the 1st-7th centuries AD.

Then, like Tres Zapotes, he becomes a victim of an enemy invasion and dies in the flames of fires under the jubilant cries of the victors. Everything that could be destroyed was destroyed. Everything that could be robbed and carried away was carried away. Uninvited aliens sought to destroy literally everything that reminded them of the culture and religion of the defeated people. But huge stone heads, columns and statues carved from steel-hard basalt were not so easy to destroy. And then, in impotent fury, the ancient vandals broke small sculptures, and the beautiful and expressive faces of large statues were deliberately disfigured and damaged. Nevertheless, most of the amazing creations of the artists and sculptors of La Venta survived the centuries, and they were rediscovered for mankind already in the middle of the 20th century by the skillful hands of archaeologists.

In the very center of the city, from the foot of the high pyramid and further to the north, there is a wide flat area, bordered on all sides by vertically standing basalt columns. In the middle of it, above the dense grass and bushes, rose some strange structure in the form of a platform built from the same basalt columns. When the platform was completely cleared, a kind of basalt house appeared before the archaeologists, half deepened into the ground. Its long wall consisted of nine vertically placed stone pillars, and the short one consisted of five. From above, this rectangular room was blocked by a run-up of the same basalt pillars. The house had no doors or windows. The ancient builders so skillfully adjusted the giant stone columns to each other that even a mouse could not slip between them. But each of them weighed almost two, or even three tons!

With the help of a hand winch and strong ropes, the workers began to pull apart the roof of the mysterious building. After the removal of four columns, the hole in the roof became so wide that one could risk going down to where the interior of a spacious room was hidden in thick black shadows, walled up by the priests of La Venta 15 centuries ago.

“First,” writes Matthew Stirling, “we stumbled upon an elegant little pendant in the form of a jaguar fang, carved from green jade ... Then an oval mirror appeared from a carefully polished piece of obsidian. And further, in the depths of the room, some kind of platform, made of clay and lined with stone, towered. A large patch of bright purple paint stood out clearly on its surface. Inside it, we found the remains of human bones that belonged to at least three buried.

Next to the skeletons lay all sorts of items made of precious jade of green and bluish tones: funny little figurines in the form of sitting men with children's faces, dwarfs and freaks, frogs, snails, jaguars, outlandish flowers and beads.

In the southwestern corner of the burial platform, a strange headdress was found, resembling a “crown of thorns” rather than a symbol of power and high position of its owner. Six long needles were strung on a strong cord. sea ​​urchin, separated from each other by elaborate jade decorations in the form of outlandish flowers and plants. There were also two large jade coils - ear ornaments and the remains of a wooden funeral mask inlaid with jade and shells. Not far from the platform, the workers stumbled upon a cache hidden in the ground, which contained 37 polished jade and serpentine axes.

According to a legend still held by the inhabitants of La Vepta, the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma, was buried here, among the ruins of the ancient city. And when night falls on the earth, he leaves his tomb to dance in the ghostly rays of moonlight with his associates in the wide squares and deserted streets of the Olmec capital, which has fallen asleep forever.

And although all this is just a fruit of popular imagination, a beautiful legend, the scientific significance of the basalt tomb is by no means reduced by the fact that instead of Montezuma, some other powerful ruler was buried in it, who lived 9-10 centuries before the appearance of the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico.

Olmec civilization. The Secret of the Sixteen Men.

In 1955, after a long break, excavations were continued in the Olmec capital, La Venta. One after another, amazing finds appeared: reliefs, mosaics, magnificent sculptures, stelae and altars. And suddenly the worker's shovel, breaking through the hard layer of cement that covered the surface of the clay platform, fell down into the void of a narrow and deep pit. When the archaeologists finally reached its bottom, there, against the background of yellow clay, green spots of polished jade shone brightly in the sun's rays. Sixteen little stone men - participants in some unknown dramatic performance - solemnly froze in front of a fence of six vertically placed jade axes. Who are they? And why were they hidden at the bottom of a deep hole, arranged in a certain, but incomprehensible order for us?

It is possible that the sixteenth participant in the ancient pagan ritual can give a clue to this archaeological puzzle.
His solitary figure, carved from granite unlike the others, stands with its back to the flat surface of the fence. The remaining fifteen figures are made of jade and have a purely Olmec appearance. All of them, turning their heads to one side, stare intently at the person opposing them. From the right, a procession of four gloomy figures with frozen masked faces is approaching him. Who is this lonely standing man? The high priest who manages a solemn pagan rite, or a victim who will be thrown down in a moment on the bloody altar of an unknown god?

And here the description of a terrible custom, once widespread among many peoples of antiquity, involuntarily comes to mind. According to them, the king was considered the center magical powers that govern the life of nature. He is responsible for a good harvest of crops, for an abundant offspring of livestock, for the fertility of the women of the entire tribe. He gets almost divine honors. He tastes all the blessings of life, enjoying luxury and peace. But one day the day comes when the king must pay a hundredfold for his wealth and for his exorbitant power. And the only payment he is obliged to give to his people is his own life! According to ancient customs, the people cannot tolerate a weakened, sick or aging king for a single minute, since the well-being of the whole country depends on the state of his health. A tragic ending is coming. The old ruler is killed. A. in his place they choose a young, full of strength successor. And this terrible cycle of murder and coronations continued in many countries for hundreds of years.
Who knows, maybe by chance we also managed to see in all its tragic fullness this terrible ritual played out by sixteen stone men from La Venta?

Olmecs. Gold and jade

Among the civilized peoples of pre-Columbian America, unlike the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and other inhabitants of the Old World, the main symbol of wealth was not gold, but jade. This fact so impressed the imagination of the first Europeans, who broke through the oceanic barrier to the unknown shores of the New World at the beginning of the 16th century, that they repeatedly returned to it in their historical narratives and chronicles.

When, in 1519, Cortes landed on the desert coast of Mexico, not far from modern city Veracruz, the local Indian ruler hastened to send a message about this extraordinary event to his supreme ruler, Emperor Montezuma. And already a few days later, a magnificent procession of ambassadors and nobles from the Aztec emperor appeared in front of the camping tent of Cortes. Silently spreading several mats at the entrance to the tent, they laid out a lot of expensive gifts on them.

“The first was a round dish,” recalls Berial Diaz, “the size of a cart wheel, with the image of the sun, all of pure gold. According to the people who weighed it, it cost 20,000 gold pesos. The second was a round dish, even larger than the first, made of solid silver, with the image of the moon; a very valuable item. The third was a helmet filled to the brim with golden sand worth no less than 3,000 pesos. There were many golden figurines of birds, beasts and gods, 30 bales of fine cotton fabrics, beautiful cloaks of feathers, and in addition, four green stones, which they value more than our emerald. And they told Cortes that these stones were intended for our emperor, since each of them is worth a whole load of gold.

If it is true that jade was valued by the Indians more than gold, then it is also true that most jade products are found in the country of the Olmecs. And this is all the more striking because on the swampy shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where the main Olmec cities are located, there were no deposits of jade. It was obtained either
in the south, in the mountains of Guatemala, or in the west, in Oaxaca. Be that as it may, a large amount of this precious and unusually hard mineral ended up in the Olmec country, where rough pieces of stone turned under the hands of skilled Olmec jewelers into elegant statuettes of the gods, intricate jewelry, beads and ritual axes. And from there, from the Olmec centers of La Venta, Tres Zapotes, Cerro de las Mesas, these magnificent jade gizmos dispersed throughout Central America, from the northernmost regions of Mexico to Costa Rica.

Olmecs - Fans of the jaguar.

If all the works of ancient Olmec art were exhibited in the halls of one large museum, then its visitors would immediately pay attention to one strange detail. Of every two or three sculptures, one would necessarily depict either a jaguar or a creature that combines the features of a person and a jaguar.

When you find yourself in the mysterious green twilight of the Mexican jungle, it is easy to understand why the Olmec masters tried with such fanatical persistence to capture the image of this ferocious beast.

One of the most powerful predators of the Western Hemisphere, the formidable lord of the rainforest, the jaguar was for the ancient Indians not only a dangerous beast, but also a symbol of supernatural forces, revered by an ancestor and god. In the religion of various tribes of ancient Mexico, the jaguar is usually considered the god of rain and fertility, the personification of the fruitful forces of the earth. Is it any wonder that the Olmecs, whose economy was based on agriculture, revered the jaguar god with special zeal, imprinting it forever in their monumental art.

Even today, four centuries after the Spanish conquest and a thousand years after the death of the Olmec civilization, the image of the jaguar still causes superstitious horror among the Indians, and ritual dances in his honor are widespread among the inhabitants of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. What tricks did the ancient Olmecs resort to so that the formidable lord of forests and heavenly waters provided them with a good harvest. They built magnificent temples in honor of him, carved his image on reliefs and steles, gave him the most precious gift on earth - human lives.

During the excavations of the main square of La Venta, almost at a depth of six meters, archaeologists found a perfectly preserved mosaic in the form of a stylized muzzle of a jaguar. General dimensions mosaics - about five square meters. It consists of 486 carefully hewn polished blocks of bright green serpentine, fixed with bitumen to the surface of a low stone platform. The empty eye sockets and mouth of the beast were filled with orange sand, and the top of its angular skull was adorned with stylized diamond-shaped feathers.
Exactly the same mosaic was subsequently discovered at the other end of the sacred square of the city. But there, in addition to the image of the predator itself, in the depths of the stone platform, they managed to find the richest gifts in his honor: a pile of precious Things and jewelry made of jade and serpentine.

The earthly rulers, wishing to somehow strengthen the already vast royal power, considered the jaguar to be their divine ancestor and patron. On reliefs, frescoes and stelae, they are constantly depicted in jaguar skin clothes or sitting on thrones made in the form of a figure of this beast. The fangs and claws of the jaguar are constantly found in the richest and most magnificent burials, not only among the Olmecs, but also among most others. cultural peoples pre-Columbian Mexico.