10.3: Mesoamerica

Although scholars believe that humans migrated to Beringia and North America first, Mesoamerica was the first section of the Americas where scholars have found evidence of large settlements, agriculture, and unique cultural traditions. The cultural region is found in what is now the modern countries of Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and eastern Honduras. The region’s frequent volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and hurricanes gave it quite a staggering amount of ecological diversity including mountains, coastal plains, and a peninsular limestone platform (the Yucatán). In addition, climatic diversity was promoted by its tropical and subtropical latitudes.

Less is known about migration to Mesoamerica than for North and South America. However, many scholars put people in the region by 15,000 BCE. These early residents hunted large and small game alike and consumed a wide range of plant resources. In the Archaic period (8000 to 2000 BCE), scores of cultures adapted to the region’s ecological diversity by domesticating wild food sources like “beans, squash, amaranth, peppers, and wild Maize (teosinte).”¹ Groups living closer to the coast could also take advantage of wetland crops, such as manioc.

10.3.1: Early Farming in Mesoamerica

Foragers in the southern Mexican highlands lived on a diverse diet of plants and animals, including cactus fruit, corn, squash, beans, fish, deer, and rabbits. Meanwhile, people in the tropical lowlands consumed tubers like manioc, sweet potato, arrowroot as well as fruits like avocadoes. Mesoamericans domesticated most of these crops before becoming sedentary, which led to the existence of regional variations in the path to agriculture.

Over the next several centuries, village dwellings changed. Brick walls and plaster floors began to replace hides and sticks. Unlike round huts, new rectangular houses allowed for extending walls and adding a perpendicular end wall. Expanding permanent dwellings allowed villages to grow through natural population increase. Public and private space became more distinct from public and private activities, affecting communal and private property. Not only did villages have to decide where and how to build, they also had to organize around when to plant, where to settle, when to harvest, and where to store the food. The invention of pottery served storage needs tremendously. Tasks in construction, defense, and food production became more specialized and supervised, leading to the beginnings of class. The elite developed, usually comprising warriors, priests, and administrators.

10.3.2: The Formative Period

By the beginning of the Formative Period (circa 2000 BCE), most residents of Mesoamerica were living in small bands that moved only seasonally.² However, by 300 CE, large urban centers had emerged. The rapid transition was possible because of greater use of domesticated crops and storage and improved technology, like pottery vessels.

Pottery appeared between 1900 BCE and 1750 BCE on the Pacific coast of Chiapas in highland valleys and on the Gulf coast. After about 1400 BCE, there was widespread sharing of obsidian, shell, jade, and iron artifacts. A social hierarchy also began to develop, where there was a two-tiered settlement hierarchy. In other words, the elite had bigger houses. Over time and in more areas, plastered floors and dirt floors appeared in different dwellings and altars in others. Burials were affected by social class too.

Map \(\PageIndex{1}\): Map of the Formative Era Sites, c. 600 BCE Author: User “Madman2001” Source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC BY-SA 3.0

The Olmec were the earliest civilization in Mesoamerica and drove much of this rapid development. Developed along the Gulf of Mexico, this group flourished during the Early Formative and Middle Formative (1500 – 400 BCE), while the Late Formative (400 BCE – 100 CE) saw their evolution and transformation.

The Olmec's most notable accomplishment was their monumental stone sculpture. Other Mesoamerican cultures had stone monuments, but the Olmec versions were unique in their sophistication, size, and number. Between 1400 BCE to 400 BCE, statues were carved out of thrones or in low relief on stelae. The largest weighed over forty tons. Stones would have had been transported as much as 56 miles (90 kilometers) from their original sources, requiring a large labor force.

Aside from statues, Olmec elites commissioned carved columns, drains, and embellishments in large houses. An inordinate amount of iron trade also occurred, and objects like polished iron mirrors were found in the tombs of high-ranking individuals. The import of jade sculptures was perhaps even more prominent with thousands of tons of “serpentine blocks” buried in massive offerings at the Olmec center of La Venta in southern Mexico.³

Early in the Formative Period, most groups were organized in tribes, but the Olmec soon began to form a set of chiefdoms that allowed for organized leadership across generations, albeit through kinship ties. Recognized as the first civilization in the region to develop a state, the Olmec had a stratified social hierarchy and specialized institutions.

Not all scholars agree that the Olmec had an 'empire'. Why?

• The Olmec never had a large enough population at their disposal to form a conquering army.
• While there existed a number of significant urban Olmec sites, such as La Venta and San Lorenzo, none of them has been identified as an Olmec capital.
• The art and archeological records of surrounding societies don’t indicate Olmec domination. Rather, elites seemed to have both political and religious authority and a considerable amount of influence in a quasi-theocratic state.

Why did the Olmec evolve at all, and why did they evolve when they did?

• Ecological relationship to Mesoamerica’s lowland environment.
• Increased productivity led to high population growth, which caused pressure to organize politically. Control of these resources contributed to the authority of individual chieftains.
• Abundant but lack of agricultural diversity forced them to live closer to obsidian, salt, and stone deposits. (The Olmec would need to trade for these resources that were central for hunting and food production).

Once the Olmec did manage to organize as states, they began to plan for their permanence. Around 1650 BCE, the Olmec began to produce stone effigy bowls, which were much smaller than the monumental sculptures that followed. Over 200 known monumental stone sculptures remain; one-third are from San Lorenzo and the surrounding area. The colossal heads are the largest; some stand up to three and a half meters tall. Each head is unique, containing its own ear ornaments, headdress, specific facial features, and expressions. Most scholars think they are portraits.

The Olmec also crafted smaller round sculptures that incorporated human and supernatural themes, rituals, or symbolic postures. In a later period, stelae emerge, which depict supernatural beings and elaborately dressed individuals engaged in specific actions. All Olmec stone sculptures are even more impressive considering the fact that they were made with no metal tools!

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Olmec Colossal Head, La Venta, Mexico Author: User “Hajor” Source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC BY-SA 3.0

The Olmec believed in shamanism, that a direct connection existed between order on earth and order in the spiritual world. Through ritual and the assistance of their nagual (animal spirit companion), these shamans could travel to the supernatural world or guard against spirits who desired harm.⁴ A number of altars and smaller sculptures show human-jaguar or human-dragon anthropomorphs, particularly those that reflect the existence of a gateway or portal between worlds. For example, La Venta Altar 4 had an earthly purpose as a throne and a symbolic one as a cosmological model. When the Olmec ruler sat on the throne he could be present in both the natural and supernatural realms. This journey between worlds was aided by the intercession of the ruler’s animal spirit companion (in this case a jaguar).⁵

The Olmec undoubtedly left a lasting legacy on the Caribbean coast of Mesoamerica. Recent scholarship has given less credence to the Olmec as a “mother culture” and argues that it developed independently of Maya and Valley of Mexico cultures. Hopefully, as scholars and students examine the Olmec as an independent cultural entity, its legacy will continue to become clearer.

References

1/2 Michael E. Smith and Marilyn A. Masson, eds., The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), 8.

3 Christopher Pool, Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7.

4/5 F. Kent Reilly III, “Art, Ritual and Rulership in the Olmec World,” In Smith and Masson, eds., 393.