The Olmec
Colossal basalt heads on the Gulf coast, carved without metal tools.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 800 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
The Olmec centres of San Lorenzo and later La Venta produce monumental sculpture including seventeen known colossal heads, up to three metres tall and twenty tonnes, carved from basalt hauled fifty kilometres or more, with individualised faces generally read as portraits of rulers. They also work jade, build earthen pyramids, and originate iconography — the were-jaguar, the maize god, the ballgame — that runs through every later Mesoamerican culture.