Captivating History - Ancient Civilizations for Kids: A Captivating Guide to the Maya Civilization, the Inca Empire, and Aztec History for Children

Map of the Olmec heartland

Olmec Stele with Numbers, Veracruz, 600-100 BC

The humid climate, enough water, and fertile (full of minerals) soil of the lowlands in the south and central areas of the Gulf of Mexico were ideal for hunter-gatherers to start growing their food from the seeds of wild plants. This domestication (making it suitable for home use) of wild plants allowed them to settle in one place all year round. By around 1300 BCE (Before Common Era or before Christ was born) groups of hunter-gatherers had already developed small permanent societies in this region. Although traces of the Maya people predate many of the groups that settled in this area, the Olmec people developed into a booming society before them, between 1400 and 300 BCE, with the first Mesoamerican city built by the Olmecs around 1150 BCE. They even started a writing system, as we can see from an example of their numbers on a stele in a museum in Veracruz, Mexico.

The Olmecs influenced every society after them in Mesoamerica and parts of South America, including the Maya. Scholars are not exactly sure where they came from or when they developed into a complex or high-level civilization, but their main village had grown into a city by around 1150 BCE. Today, archaeologists call this rediscovered city San Lorenzo . As you probably already know, archaeologists are the scientists who investigate and dig up old places to discover their history and secrets.

Just like the real name of the Olmec people, the locations and names of their cities and cultural centers were forgotten over time. Scholars have given their rediscovered cities new names. Most of what we know about the Olmecs comes from later cultures and some well-reasoned guesswork and ideas based on archaeological excavations and comparisons of stories from later cultures. Their cultural and material legacy spread everywhere because the Olmecs traded all over with all sorts of goods, but especially with rubber, which they made from rubber trees and vine juice. The later Aztecs even named them Olmec , which means rubber people in the Aztec language.

Talk about guessing ! This is one of the exciting things about the study of ancient history. There are always many clever and well-thought-out ideas involved in this guessing game when you are ready to discover something new or explore a better idea about how or why something happened in the past. In the case of the Olmecs, we have a little help, though. Archaeologists and historians can understand and figure out a lot about their history and influence because they left behind well-made sculptures, reliefs (wall carvings), murals (wall paintings), and some writing on stone surfaces.

We are learning a lot of new words today, arent we?

San Lorenzo did not have a large population living inside the city. People lived in the surrounding areas where they made things like pottery. And they planted crops such as cotton, beans, squash, and corn which again tells us that there was a class structure . The elite, like rulers and priests and important people, probably dwelt in the city. Peasants, manufacturers, and farmers lived around the city. The city was the cultural and religious center. This pattern is repeated in their other cities that have been discovered so far.