The Olmec

The Olmec was an ancient American civilisation that lived in what is now modern-day Mexico, around the states of Tabasco and Veracruz, and they survived from about 1,600 - 350 BCE.

The Olmec were famous for building large 20-ton stone heads in the shape of their rulers to represent them. The word Olmec comes from the word rubber people in the Aztec language, as the Olmec would trade rubber with other civilisations for goods. 

The Olmec was one of the first major civilisations in Mexico.
As stated above, the name Olmec comes from the word rubber people, meaning it could have been one of the first civilisations to be able to turn the sap from the rubber tree into usable materials by hardening, shaping and curing it. 

The Olmec didn't have a written language, so it is speculated that it was an oral one and unwritten.

They appeared roughly around 1600 BCE The Olmecs were one of the first Mesoamerican civilisations.
They were famous for carving structures out of a special volcanic rock named Basalt.

It is also speculated that they have influenced future civilisations like the Mayans, and were the creators of the Mesoamerican ballgame, or the Mayan death-ball games played with rubber balls and the game, which was a form of ritual bloodletting.

They hardly kept written records and documents about their customs or beliefs, but it is well known that they had extensive trade routes since archaeologists could find the Olmec's traded goods all around Mesoamerica.

Often trading Obsidian and Jade with people outside the Gulf of Mexico, most of Oaxaca, and what is now the country of Guatemala in the south.

While the obsidian originated from the Mexican highlands in the north, this trade helped expand and complicate the trade routes in Mesoamerica.

Trading helped the Olmec expand its urban centres, such as San Lorenzo and La Venta, and most of the Olmec people lived in small villages, and the cities were reserved for the Elite and for ceremonial purposes.

Most of the Olmec lived in small villages with a pit to store root vegetables.
They lived in lean-tos, which are like small tents; they may have also had gardens, which allowed them to grow herbs either for food or medicinal purposes, such as sunflowers.

Often growing crops like maize, beans, sweet potatoes, cotton and squashes, often using the slash and burn method, which means that all the little crops are slashed and burned to make way for new crops to grow.

Unfortunately, the Religion of the Olmec wasn't written down compared to other civilisations.
We do know that they had their gods, their deities, followed natural things such as a bird creature which looked like a harpy eagle, meant to symbolise kingship and ruling.
The Olmec dragon, which was noted to have eyebrows with flames, a forked tongue and a round bulbous nose. 

Their other gods, such as their Maise deity, the ware-Jaguar or rain spirit, and the fish or shark creature, which priests would make offerings at religious sites at San Lorenzo and La Venta.

They made their art via greenstone, which is a way of saying carved from green materials, basalt, jade and clay, making figures often human shaped.

Pre-contact Americas

 Around 15,0000-16,000 years ago, humans settled in North America.
We have theories that they came from Asia via a land bridge that connected what we know as continents. 

These people spread all the way down to Chile as early as 14,500 years ago, then around 7,000 - 8,000 years ago, they were doing agriculture, which also during that time was also around when agriculture was appearing all around the world as humans were discovering how to grow crops. 

Around 1492, Columbus arrived in America, marking the beginning of the European colonisation of America.

Most believe that the native Americans were hunter-gatherers and that America was sparsely populated by them, which is far from the truth.
The population of the Native Americans during the time of Columbus, which was around 1500 BCE, was around 50-100 million in population. 
To put the population into scale, the world population was around 500,000 during the 1500s, which means that just the population of America was roughly 10% of the world population.

Other Famous civilisations, like the Aztecs, who were from the Mexica people, are ancestors of Mexicans.
And the Mayans, who we know as one of the longest-lasting civilisations in history, and one of the civilisations to use writing via the use of hieroglyphics and made what are now Mayan Temples.

Along with the Incas, who had extravagant buildings and social structures, it is believed that it was the largest civilisation of that time.

The Mississippian people were a North American culture, which is why the Mississippi River is named after them.
And their city of Cahokia, which is now near Saint Louis, had at its peak a population of around 40,000, and this was around the same time as the Indus Valley and the ancient Chinese civilisations.

The oldest civilisation in Mesoamerica is the Olmec civilisation, which we will discuss in the next post.

Along with the Olmec, there was also the Caral civilisation, which is now in modern-day Peru.
which some people say was the "first" civilisation instead of the others.
Strangely enough, the Caral civilisation is one that we are unsure if they farmed crops, since they were a maritime culture and maybe had gotten most of their food via fishing.

We believe that the Caral civilisation developed around the 4th millennium BCE, which, to put it into scale, is around when Egypt was being unified by King Menes.

The main idea is that the Americas were already developing long before the Europeans, because some people believe that only after the Europeans came and colonised America did the American people start becoming more of a civilisation.

After the European colonisation, within 150 years or around 1650, the American population declined from 50 million - 100 million to around 6 million.
Some people say it was because of a genocide, or diseases, that the Americans couldn't recover from that were brought over by the Europeans.

These were just sampled civilisations from the Americas; there were thousands of tribes spanning both North and South America.