gems, jade, pyroxene jade, fei cui, mesoamerica, Guatemala, Mexico, Aztec, Olmec, Maya, Costa Rica, Honduras, rubber, sculpture, art, history, anthropology, archaeology, archaeogemology

On the coastal plain of southern Veracruz and northern Tabasco, humid, tropical, and swampy, there are archaeological sites such as La Venta, El Trapiche, Cerro de las Mesas, Tres Zapotes, and others, covered by a luxuriant jungle that contrasts in some areas with the flora characteristic of marshes and wetlands. In that hostile region, crowded with forests, waterways, and grasslands, certain human groups developed their culture to remarkable levels, considering the tropical jungle that hindered agricultural settlement, the heat and humidity that reduced the capacity for human labour, and the rudimentary technology of the time. Despite these highly adverse conditions, a vigorous artistic style originated there which, in the course of time, influenced many neighbouring peoples, left its mark even in distant places, and fostered the emergence of the great civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico. In archaeological terminology, the culture that created this artistic style is known as the Olmec culture and also as the Culture of La Venta, because it was at this site—the most thoroughly studied—that it reached its true florescence. Yet despite the extensive bibliography and research already devoted to this culture, its origin and development, its evolutionary phases and characteristics, as well as its interrelationships and antiquity, remain fascinating subjects for any investigator. Olmec means “inhabitant of Olman”; that is, an inhabitant of the land of rubber, of the tropical lowlands in general, and especially of the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where the finest rubber was produced in pre-Hispanic times. This is the meaning given to the term by the chroniclers of the sixteenth century, who used it to designate several coastal groups occupying that region around the time of the conquest. In the historical sources, the Olmecs are almost always mentioned together with the Uixtotin, Nonohualcas, and other groups. These names mean respectively “people of the land of rubber,” “people of the salt flats,” and “those who do not speak Nahuatl.” As Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán has pointed out, “rubber,” “salt flats,” and “a different language” are characteristics that aptly describe both the region and the inhabitants of the southern Gulf Coast.