Word: olmec
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Rosenblum’s sweet saga begins in Mesoamerica, the birthplace of chocolate. Archaeologists say that the Mesoamerican Olmec people drank chocolate several millennia ago. And when Hernan Cortes and other conquistadors arrived in Mesoamerica, they were fascinated by chocolate. But most Europeans took some time to fall in love with chocolate—it wasn’t until the 1580s that they started processing and eating it in large quantities...
...History of a Civilization That Ruled the World (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $60) lives up to its title by providing a comprehensive study of Roman life, politics and art. Imaginative drawings re-create the way the Eternal City looked in its glory days. An even older civilization is presented in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico (Abrams; $80). These people, who thrived some 3,000 years ago, left no written documents, but their great stone faces and elaborate masks speak mysterious volumes. Splendors of Imperial China (Rizzoli; $60) affords a sweeping overview of some 5,000 years of artifacts and art produced...
...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...
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...
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...