It was these stone heads with slanting eyes and thick lips that glorified the Olmec people. Lost among tropical vegetation, these meter-long boulders carved from solid basalt seem to be eternal.
No one knows where they came from and what the creators of these strange statues were actually called, where their homeland was.
They appeared on the territory of modern Mexico about three and a half thousand years ago as if out of thin air, with a ready-made way of life and immediately began to build cities and erect pyramids. They created a special hieroglyphic script that no one can read yet.
They left giant heads carved from basalt as a keepsake. Who are they, the Olmecs? Their history is full of question marks, and even recent archaeological research does little to clarify their fate.
The first such sculpture was discovered in 1862. However, research expeditions began to be undertaken only 80 years after this find. After the first stone head, others were found, the total number of found statues was 17. They were made of basalt and have impressive dimensions and weight. The smallest sculpture weighs 6 tons. The largest head weighs about 50 tons and reaches almost 3.5 meters in height.
But despite the individuality of the traits, all the giant heads of the Olmecs are united by one common and mysterious feature. The heads are depicted with flat noses, thick lips, plump cheeks, and slightly slanted eyes, which some researchers consider to be evidence of their Negroid origin.
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The portraits of the people depicted on these sculptures have strange features that some seem to be Negro: a wide, flattened nose with large nostrils, full lips and large slanting eyes. The round faces of the statues look puffy and sometimes resemble the plump faces of children.
The forehead, often quite high, is hidden under a closely pulled helmet, the edge of which almost reaches the eyes, and the side plates cover the ears. The back of the head is usually very carelessly finished or not finished at all. The helmets are only outlined. Apparently, the sculptors focused on the faces of these people, trying to convey their individual features with amazing liveliness and realism.
With inexpressible sadness, these, as if beheaded, heads look at us. Archaeologists do not know who served as the prototype for the unusual sculptures: the rulers of the Olmecs, their warriors, or maybe the famous ball players (according to one hypothesis, the executed ball players)?
All heads have elaborate ears decorated with large earrings or ear inserts. Earlobe piercing was a common tradition in all ancient cultures of Mexico.
These heads were cut from basalt in the Las Tuxtlas massif and delivered 60 to 125 kilometers to the place where they were installed.
The skill of the stone-cutters is also surprising, because the tools with which they processed the basalt blocks were the most primitive: stone chisels, simple augers and sand, which replaced sandpaper. The Olmecs had no metal tools and no stone tools harder than basalt!
The next secret of the stone heads is their age. It is now difficult for scientists to establish the exact date or period of the appearance of these stone sculptures due to the fact that most of them were removed from their original location even before the beginning of archaeological research. The largest head was found abandoned in an unfinished state at the site of a quarry.
Today historians consider the Olmecs to be the “fathers of local history”, the “cultural heroes” of Mesoamerica - Mexico and Central America - the forerunners of the Maya, Zapotecs and Aztecs. From 1200 to 400 BC, that is, in the era, by the standards of the Old World, which passed between the Trojan War and the "Golden Age of Athens", the Olmecs dominated this entire region. Their works of art were highly valued, they were imitated by the tribes and peoples who lived here, their religion was accepted, their political order was sought to be borrowed, and their economic skills were learned.
The largest monuments of the Olmecs are San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes. These were real urban centers, the first in Mexico. They included large ceremonial complexes with earthen pyramids, an extensive system of irrigation canals, city blocks and numerous necropolises. It is among the Olmecs that the elite is formed for the first time in the history of this region. It was the Olmecs who first began to worship the main deity of Mesoamerica - the Jaguar.
The Olmec civilization is considered the first of the largest in Mesoamerica. It is also called one of the "six cradles of civilization" in the world. Today all 17 stone heads are kept in anthropological museums in Mexico.
