How Did The Olmec Influence The Latin American Civilization

The Olmec people were a civilization living on a coastal plain along the south coast of the Gulf of Mexico that existed from roughly 1600 BCE, when they first appeared, to when the civilization mysteriously ended, hundreds of years later. The culture of these people would someday be used to help establish many other mesoamerican civilizations. Their influence eventually led to the reign of groups such as the Aztecs and the Maya. The word “Olmec” can be translated to mean “rubber people” in their native language of Nahuatl, a language whose existence remains unknown still to many people.

These ancient civilians lived in a swampy, hot and humid area of Mexico that overflowed with hill ridges as well as the occasional volcano. While some details about the Olmec people are still unknown, there are many facts that researchers have discovered about the group. Many artifacts from places such as San Lorenzo and La Venta, the two major cities that were a part of the Latin American civilization, have helped develop the information we know about the Olmecs. “These cities were like small villages, not to big, they were around the size of a small town, and they had small homes with an abundance of temples in what would seem to be something like a town square. At the temples they

The sculptures towered up to three meters in the air and were nearly four and a half meters in circumference. Not only were they large in volume, but the stone heads dominated in mass. They could weigh up to nearly 40 tons, although it was rare to have many of them being that heavy.” Other art produced by the Olmec people were things such as wood carvings and cave painting. However, many of the wooden carving cease to exist, disintegrating over time, unlike the many cave painting created by the olmecs which still remain in caves that are now a part of the Mexican state,