gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology, Pre-Columbian jade; Costa Rica; Maya; exchange; iconography, lapidary

The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Classic Central Mexico has as its subject one of the most arresting topics of New World prehistory. The Olmec of Mexico—originators of the earliest great civilization in Middle America—produced an extraordinary art. Its impact on contemporary and subsequent Mexican developments was enormous. It is this impact on an area in the Central Highlands, parts of the states of Morelos, Puebla, and the Valley of Mexico, that is described here by Michael D. Coe of Yale University. Long a student of the Olmec era, Dr. Coe discusses the extensive site of Tlatilco, the transitional site of Tlapacoya, and the very important and previously unpublished site of Las Bocas. Problems of symbolism, iconography, and the close relation of Olmec art to religion are examined, as well as the relation of Olmec culture to that of Central Highland tradition. Illustrated by over 200 pieces, many published for the first time, the emphasis has been placed on material from Las Bocas. The most important “baby-face” figures of the period have come from that site. These are graphic and humanized representations of the major Olmec deity, a rain god whose shape was that of a were-jaguar, a fat, childlike creature with feline features. Believed to have been born of a jaguar father and a human mother, they are the Jaguar’s Children. Dr. Coe first published on Pre-Classic Middle America and the Olmec in 1957 and is the author of the important articles on them in the Handbook of Middle American Indians. His excavations at the early village site of La Victoria on the Pacific coast of Guatemala were reported in the Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (1961). He wrote the volume on Mexico (1962) in Praeger’s Ancient Peoples and Places series and was engaged in a work on the Maya to appear in the same series.