Word: mexico
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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More than 1,500 years before the Maya flourished in Central America, 25 centuries before the Aztecs conquered large swaths of Mexico, the mysterious Olmec people were building the first great culture of Mesoamerica. Starting in 1200 B.C. in the steamy jungles of Mexico's southern Gulf Coast, the Olmec's influence spread as far as modern Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica and El Salvador. They built large settlements, established elaborate trade routes and developed religious iconography and rituals, including ceremonial ball games, blood-letting and human sacrifice, that were adapted by all the Mesoamerican civilizations to follow...
...about 300 B.C., their civilization vanished. No one knows why. But they left behind some of the finest artworks ever produced in ancient America, the most spectacular of which will be on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington starting next week. Titled "Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico," the exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of 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...
...Lorenzo shows clear evidence of class structure, according to Ann Cyphers, an Olmec scholar at Mexico's National Autonomous University, with more elaborate housing for the upper classes and simpler accommodations for the middle class and the poor. There were also, observes Cyphers, workshops for producing artifacts, and irrigation and drainage systems. "All these things show a society of great complexity," she says...
...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...
...ADOBE CHURCHES OF NEW MEXICO The largest assemblage of publicly used earthen buildings...