The principal Olmec ceremonial centers were San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes (trays sah-POE-tayz). To visualize these locations, one can imagine the Olmec lands as a big triangle with one point facing downward. The Gulf Coast would be along the top side of the triangle, and San Lorenzo would be at the bottom point. La Venta would be at the right-hand (or eastern) corner, and Tres Zapotes on the left (or western) corner. (These names, by the way, are Spanish, and were therefore not the names the Olmec themselves gave to these places.)
Founded in about 1300 b. c., San Lorenzo was built on a man-made plateau, meaning that human labor flattened out the mountaintop on which it sat. This accomplishment alone implies that the society of the Olmec was advanced. As with projects from the Egyptian pyramids onward, only a very organized nation, and one with a strong central government, can call on its people to undertake such ambitious building projects.
Olmec stone carving.
Springer/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permisison.
Further evidence of the highly organized Olmec system can be found in the massive public works projects, including drainage systems, water storage ponds, and stone pavements, uncovered by archaeologists. San Lorenzo was a city of houses built in the shape of mounds: at one point, there were some 200 of these house-mounds, containing about 1,000 people. But just as suburbs surround modern cities, thousands more people—farmers, mostly—lived in surrounding areas.
By 900 B. C., San Lorenzo had declined and was replaced by La Venta.
Both cities were built on salt domes, or large deposits of rock salt underneath the earth, but whereas San Lorenzo was primarily a ceremonial center, La Venta apparently also served functions typical of any city, housing tradesmen and people of other professions. In some ways, it was a model for the much more splendid city of Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-hwah-KAHN) that would follow it. Thus La Venta was built on a grid pattern, as Teotihuacan would later be; and just as Teotihuacan was dominated by the Pyramid of the Sun, La Venta had a main pyramid about 100 feet (30.5 meters) tall.
After 400 b. c., the focus of Olmec civilization shifted to Tres Zapotes, which lay beyond the Tuxtla (TOOS-lah) Mountains. The Tuxtla were the primary source of basalt (BAY-sawlt), a dark volcanic rock from which the Olmec fashioned some of their greatest works, items that have become a symbol of ancient Mexico. These works are colossal stone heads, of which sixteen have been discovered around San Lorenzo and other sites since a. d. 1860. All are generally round in shape, depicting male figures with flat noses and thick lips.
Dating from between 1200 and 900 b. c., the stone heads weigh as much as 30,000 pounds and stand between 5 feet (1.5 meters) and 11 feet (3.4 meters) high. They represent a triumph of the ancient Americans' limited technology. First of all, the heads were carved entirely with stone tools. Even more amazing, somehow the Olmec managed to move them over great distances. Probably they used log rollers to transport the heads through the jungle, then floated them along rivers using rafts.
World History
