Olmec colossal heads

[1] All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz.

Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported more than 150 kilometres (93 mi), requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers.

The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method and logistics used to transport the stone to these sites remain unclear.

Together with these, of particular relevance to the colossal heads are the "Olmec-style masks" in stone,[9] so called because none has yet been excavated in circumstances that allow the proper archaeological identification of an Olmec context.

[15] All of the Olmec colossal heads depict mature men with flat noses and fleshy cheeks; the eyes tend to be slightly crossed.

[15] The most naturalistic Olmec art is the earliest, appearing suddenly without surviving antecedents, with a tendency towards more stylised sculpture as time progressed.

In the late 19th century, José Melgar y Serrano described a colossal head as having "Ethiopian" features, and speculations that the Olmec had African origins resurfaced in 1960 in the work of Alfonso Medellín Zenil and in the 1970s in the writings of Ivan van Sertima.

[20] Genetic studies have shown that, rather than Africa, the earliest Americans had ancestry closer to Ancient Paleo-Siberian.Although all the colossal heads are broadly similar, there are distinct stylistic differences in their execution.

The workforce would have included sculptors, labourers, overseers, boatmen, woodworkers and other artisans producing the tools to make and move the monument, in addition to the support needed to feed and otherwise attend to these workers.

The seasonal and agricultural cycles and river levels needed to have been taken into account to plan the production of the monument and the whole project may well have taken years from beginning to end.

[22] Archaeological investigation of Olmec basalt workshops suggest that the colossal heads were first roughly shaped using direct percussion to chip away both large and small flakes of stone.

[24] All seventeen of the confirmed heads in the Olmec heartland were sculpted from basalt mined in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz.

Investigators have proposed that large Cerro Cintepec basalt boulders found on the southeastern slopes of the mountains are the source of the stone for the monuments.

[26] These boulders are found in an area affected by large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that carried substantial blocks of stone down the mountain slopes, which suggests that the Olmecs did not need to quarry the raw material for sculpting the heads.

[25] Coastal currents of the Gulf of Mexico and in river estuaries might have made the waterborne transport of monuments weighing 20 tons or more impractical.

[32] The regional terrain offers significant obstacles such as swamps and floodplains; avoiding these would have necessitated crossing undulating hill country.

Earth structures such as mounds, platforms and causeways upon the plateau demonstrate that the Olmec possessed the necessary knowledge and could commit the resources to build large-scale earthworks.

[40] The ten colossal heads from San Lorenzo originally formed two roughly parallel lines running north-south across the site.

In 1962 the monument was removed from the San Lorenzo plateau in order to put it on display as part of "The Olmec tradition" exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 1963.

[64] The monument was found 0.8 kilometres (0.50 mi) southwest of the main mound at San Lorenzo, however, its original location is unknown; erosion of the gully may have resulted in significant movement of the sculpture.

[86] San Lorenzo Colossal Head 7 was reworked from a monumental throne;[34] it was discovered by a joint archaeological project by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Yale University, as a result of a magnetometer survey.

The head sports large earflares that completely cover the earlobes, although severe erosion makes their exact form difficult to distinguish.

The head was discovered by a magnetometer survey in 1994;[105] it was found buried, lying face upwards in the bottom of a ravine and was excavated by Ann Cyphers.

[109] Three of the La Venta heads were found in a line running east-west in the northern Complex I; all three faced northwards, away from the city centre.

The ears are wearing large flattened rings that overlap the straps; they probably represent jade ornaments of a type that have been recovered in the Olmec region.

Although most of the facial detail is lost, the crinkling of the bridge of the nose is still evident, a feature that is common to the frowning expressions of the other Olmec colossal heads.

[134] The discovery of one of the Tres Zapotes heads in the 19th century led to the first archaeological investigations of Olmec culture, carried out by Matthew Stirling in 1938.

[139] The head is sculpted with a simple headdress with a wide band that is otherwise unadorned, and wears rectangular ear ornaments that project forwards onto the cheeks.

[161][162] The vandals were all members of an evangelical church and appeared to have been carrying out a supposed pre-Columbian ritual, during which salts, grape juice, and oil were thrown on the heads.

[182] In November 2017, President Enrique Peña Nieto donated a full-size replica of San Lorenzo Head 8 to the people of Belize.