Message #230796

[Valerie]

(3 of 3)

Recurring images in Olmec art--dragons, birds, dwarfs, hunchbacks and, most important, the "were-jaguar" (part human, part jaguar)--indicate a belief in the supernatural and in shamanism. Olmec-style human figures typically have squarish facial features with full lips, a flat nose, pronounced jowls and slanting eyes reminiscent (at least to early travelers in the region) of African or Chinese peoples. Archaeologists have found household objects as well, but they tend to be broken. As a result, laments Joralemon, "we know relatively little about the common Olmec."

The most famous Olmec artifacts are 17 colossal stone heads, presumed to have been carved between 1200 B.C. and 900 B.C. Cut from blocks of volcanic basalt, the heads, which range in height from 5 ft. to 11 ft. and weigh as much as 20 tons, are generally thought to be portraits of rulers. Archaeologists still have not determined how the Olmec transported the basalt from quarries to various settlements as far as 80 miles away--and, in San Lorenzo, hoisted it to the top of a plateau some 150 ft. high. "It must have been an incredible engineering effort," Joralemon says. "These people didn't have beasts of burden, and they didn't have wheels. We don't know if they floated the blocks on rafts or traveled over land."

There is still hope that archaeologists can solve this mystery, as well as dozens of other unanswered questions about the Olmec. Most of the sites have barely been studied, and with good reason. Annual floods smother the land with thick layers of silt that dry into impenetrable clay. What's more, says Diehl, "about 80% of the entire Olmec territory in southern Mexico has been converted in the past 20 years from jungle to cow pastures and sugar-cane fields. There's so much vegetation on the surface that you can't just pick up pottery. Generally, you can't even see the ground." Beyond that, the hot, humid climate makes the work extremely unpleasant.

Still, in the past five or 10 years researchers have managed to uncover a number of key sites, including the monument-strewn ruins of Teopantecuanitlan in the Mexican state of Guerrero, and the sacred shrine at El Manati, whose murky springs yielded the first examples of wooden Olmec statuary and the earliest known evidence of child sacrifice in Mesoamerica. Heat and hardship notwithstanding, the prospect of understanding the still shrouded origins of Mesoamerican civilization--and the haunting beauty of the items on display at the National Gallery--makes it all seem worthwhile.

--Reported by Andrea Dorfman/New York and Paul Sherman/Mexico City

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984782-3,00.html