Archaeology Magazine - June 1965 - 45

Although the spectacular ancient sites of Middle
America- Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Chichen Itza,
Tikal, Copan, Palenque, and La Venta- have been
given a great deal of attention, the prehistory of this
area of high civilization has not yet been reconstructed
in detail. Several generations of specialistshave pieced
together only a skeleton outline of Middle American
history which fits these well known ceremonial centers
into a framework of sequential events and historical
interrelationships. That history is at present grossly
divided into three stages: Pre-Classic, Classic and
Post-Classic.The Classic period, with a general florescence in arts and sciences, is epitomized by the Maya
civilization in the southern half of Middle America,
between the third and ninth centuries of our era. This
was preceded by a long "'formative" stage of development, through the first two thousand years before
Christ, called the Pre-Classic period. Its highlight was
the Olmec culture, centered in the southern Gulf
Coast of Mexico. The Classic period was succeeded by
a Post-Classicstage lasting up to the arrival of Cortez,
early in the sixteenth century, and best known from
the Aztecs, who lived in the northern half of Middle
America. Though the broad lines of pre-Cortesian history are coming to light, there remain a number of
major gaps, perplexing problems and, no doubt, fascinating discoveries yet to be made. Hundreds of important sites are insufficientlyexplored or entirely unexcavated.
One important question is how the Classic civilizations of Middle America began. An increasingly popular hypothesis is that the Olmecs of southern Veracruz
and western Tabasco were responsible for the coalescence of the religious, intellectual and artistic foundations of the brilliant civilizations which followed. The
Olmec culture has been dated with some confidence
between the ninth and fifth centuries b.c., a period
conventionally called Middle Pre-Classic. This culture
is best known to us through its art style as expressed
in stone sculpture, both monumental and portable.
The powerfully conceived colossal stone heads of La
Venta, San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes are among the
greatest examples of the stone carver's art in the New
World (Figure 1). The Olmec art style was also
adapted to miniature sculptures of jade and other
motif of Olmec art, in
fine-grained stone. A dominant
addition to the prevalent "'baby-face" figures, is a
kind of "were-jaguar" with a snarling mouth that
droops to scroll-like corners (Figure 2). [For a discussion of some aspects of the Olmec art style, see the
article by Agustín Delgado in our Spring issue.- Ed.]
Several questions concerning the Olmecs are still
unanswered: What was the origin and inspiration for
the developed Olmec art style? Where was the source

of Olmec civilization? What was the geographic distribution of the Olmec people? The late artist and
archaeologist, Miguel Covarrubias, believed that the
Olmecs originated in Guerrero, on the west coast of
Mexico. He and a few other scholars thought that certain Olmec motifs and concepts were the result of
transpacificstimulus from eastern Asia. Most archaeologists, however, favor the region of Veracruz and
Tabasco- where the culture reached its height- for
the origin of Olmec civilization.
Large, non-portable Olmec sculpture has been
thought to be fairly well confined to the Gulf Coast
of Mexico, though stone celts, figurines and masks of
Olmec style were known to be widely distributed in
Middle America. A fine Olmec jade carving found at
El Baul on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala was the
subject of an article by Edwin Shook in Archaeology 9 (1956) 260-262. Two stray occurrencesof pure
Olmec-style petroglyphs on large boulders are also
known on the southern PacificCoast: one at San Isidro
Piedra Parada in Guatemala, near the Mexican border,
and the other at Chalchuapa in El Salvador, near the
border of Guatemala.
Here we shall focus attention on the possible role
of the southern Pacific Coast in the development of
Olmec stone sculpture. A site on the Monte Alto
estate in the Department of Escuintla, in the center of
the Guatemalan south coast and only twenty miles
from the Pacific Ocean, has a group of six impressive
boulder sculptures whose monumental size and stylistic qualities have not been generally appreciated.
In the carving of these sculptures, which lie exposed on the alluvial plain, the original contours of
the boulders from which they were made are essentially unaltered. All of them evince a definite relationship to the Olmec art style, although they are in a
class apart. Five of the monuments are roughly grouped
in a north-south row (see plan) , a fact which implies
that they are contemporaneous, although three distinct
types of sculpture are here represented. Two of the
boulders are carved into colossal human heads (Figures 3-6), one has a jaguar monster mask carved on it
(Figures 7-8; Figure 9 shows a comparable jaguar
mask) and three are fashioned into rotund human
shapes (Figures 10-12).
The Monte Alto stone sculptures were first noted
in Guatemalan publications in 1938. The most easily
available reference, however, is an article by Francis
B. Richardson in The Maya and Their Neighbors
(New York 1940) 396-397; plate 18. Only four of
the sculptures (Monuments 1-4) are illustrated, but it
is likely that the author was aware of all six. To our
knowledge, Monuments 5 and 6 have not previously
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Archaeology Magazine - June 1965

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