Word: joralemon
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...Olmec artifacts, ranging from palm-size jade carvings to a 10-ton, monumental stone head. For the next four months, visitors will be able to see treasures that have never before been permitted to leave Mexico. "It's amazing," says one of the show's curators, Peter David Joralemon of Pre-Columbian Art Research Associates in New York City. "The only major Olmec objects left in Mexico are the ones that are too fragile to travel...
...historians and archaeologists agree, however, that the Olmec produced the earliest sophisticated art in Mesoamerica and that their distinctive style provided a model for the Maya, Aztec and other later civilizations in the region. According to Joralemon, small-scale Olmec objects made prior to 900 B.C. tend to be ceramic, whereas later pieces were often fashioned of jade and serpentine, rare materials that required great skill to carve. The vast majority of Olmec artifacts are sculptures--figurines, decorated stone stelae, votive axes, altars and the like--some of which were polished to a mirror-like shine...
Human figures from the earliest period tend to wear simple, understated costumes, while later ones are more embellished. The purpose of the objects changed as well. The ceramics were simply sculptures, while the jade pieces were often intended for rulers to wear. Explains Joralemon: "They were clearly a display of personal wealth, an indication of status and prestige"-- evidence, he suggests, that the society may have been growing increasingly stratified...
...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...
...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...