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 Pre-hispanic
Mexico
Pre-Classic
 The
Olmecs
 The
apparition of the first societies corresponds to what the archaeologists
call the Pre-Classic. The testimonies from this time are about a
territory covering the western part of Mexico,
the central highland, the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca
and South-East towards Central America, meaning almost the whole
Mesoamerica. Under this still Neolithic substrate, we can see a
specific civilization, known under the name of Olmecs, developing
in the Gulf Coast, at the merge of the actual States of Veracruz
and Tabasco.
The most important centers, like San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres
Zapotes, are characterized by the presence of monticules, remains
of an architecture made of platforms, terraces, drainage canals
and pyramidal constructions. This architecture, however, contains
all the elements and the disposition characteristic of the constructions
and urban Mesoamerican groups. These blocks built by the Olmecs,
for example, form groups disposed around central places, with a
North-South orientation, that we’d find later in Teotihuacán,
for example. The inscriptions carved on the monuments indicate the
existence of a calendar and a primitive script that will develop
later in the civilizations of the neighboring regions. The snake,
the birds, the monkeys and the fish as well as the jaguar are the
other familiar designs of animal frequently used by this shaman
people who seem to believe in the hereafter. The Olmec civilization
appeared 1500 BC. It is famed for the monumental “Olmecs heads”,
stone sculptures, and it is conceived as the mother civilization
of Mexico.
It went away slowly about the second century BC in the region that
was its crib but lived a longer time somewhere else.
 Click
here to display the selection of photos about the historic patrimoine
of Mexico
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