Olmecas ingles subido 13/6/11

INTRODUCTION

Developed during the Middle Preclassic period around 1200 BC C - 500 a. C, were the first culture to build ceremonial centers, the region highly favored agriculture, rivers to irrigate their fields around the vital liquid, making them one of the most favorable places to grow, the forest gave them all the benefits flora and fauna, and the sea gave them fish and shellfish tosurvive.
The Olmecs, or "people of the rubber country, formed the first major Mesoamerican culture and reached a great development, and wore carried goods (including rubber) from Tabasco and Veracruz, and besides being great traders were great farmers, traders, great artists and builders, working from small figurines to huge Caez jade stone, working the clay and stone.
Its people lived around theceremonial centers were located endonde priests and Rulers with their families, were organized socially and provided several basic hoes to our lives today.

Geography
Its location is recorded between Veracruz and Tabasco, diffusion almost took most of Mesoamerica. This is an area of warm and humid climate, climatic conditions probably also owned the old Columbian. The Olmec heartland area isirrigated by rivers that flow down from the foothills of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca and Sierra Madre Oriental, and due to heavy rains the overflow of rivers was common, is a village in the Gulf region.
In the environs inhabited by different species, of which most are now in danger of extinction due to urbanization of the area, some examples of species that were abundant in the area are: monkeys,opossums, pigs, iguanas, pheasants, turkeys, deer and jaguars.
As in that area were not abundant materials characteristic of Olmec style, the Olmecs had to travel to the area of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas for materials such as obsidian, jade, serpentine, and cinnabar.
Regarding the flora of this place can be said to be a village in the rainforest species in its surroundings are countless butespecially settled in an area, along with corn and bean fields.

Religion
It was thought that the Olmec were monotheists, but now known to be polytheists. The Olmec worshiped the jaguar and the jaguar was a native predator in the area, jaguar figures may visually represent an Olmec myth about the interaction of the jaguar or jaguar spirit with humans. In this myth, it is said that a jaguar copulatingwith a human female and thus gave birth to these "men" jaguar ", represented as young children and adult males. The most important deity was representing agriculture, for example, life was represented by a jaguar and a snake. The jaguar represents the Earth and the Water Snake. The corn grew in the Earth with water, and therefore the combination of the two came Life.
Among his diocesan econtrar thefeathered serpent is constantly represented in Mesoamerica probably originated at the time of the Olmecs. In later traditions the Quetzal or feathered serpent was known as the inventor of books and calendars, the giver of corn to mankind, and sometimes as a symbol of death and resurrection.
Man of the harvest:
He was revered by the Olmecs who chose to give his life so his people could growfood. The heroic man of the crop is sometimes attended by a figure of a deity from another world.

Olmec Art

With the Olmecs arises, for the first time in pre-Columbian America, the large stone sculpture and carving of precious stones such as jade or serpentine. We must not lose sight, however, only had to carve and polish the stone with chisels and other tools of the same material, apart fromthe enormous difficulties to be overcome to remove large and heavy stone blocks distant quarries, and then carry them by wooden platforms, ropes and rollers to the place chosen to sculpt.
The results achieved by the Olmec certainly do not reflect those difficulties, and the colossal heads of San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, shown from the earliest dates aesthetic maturity truly amazing....