Olmec Religion
The religion of the Olmec people significantly influenced the social development and mythological world view of Mesoamerica. Scholars have seen echoes of Olmec supernatural in the subsequent religions and mythologies of nearly all later pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures.
The first Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmec, developed on present-day Mexico's southern Gulf Coast in the centuries before 1200 BCE. The culture lasted until roughly 400 BCE, at which time their center of La Venta lay abandoned. The Olmec culture is often considered a "mother culture" to later Mesoamerican cultures.
There is no surviving direct account of the Olmec's religious beliefs, unlike the Maya, with their Popul Vuh, or the Aztecs, with their many codices and conquistador accounts.
Archaeologists, therefore, have had to rely on other techniques to reconstruct Olmec beliefs, most prominently:
- Typological analysis of Olmec iconography and art.
- Comparison to later, better documented pre-Columbian cultures.
- Comparison to modern-day Native American cultures.
The latter two techniques assume that there is a continuity extending from Olmec times through later Mesoamerican cultures to the present day. This assumption is called the Continuity Hypothesis. Using these techniques, researchers have discerned several separate deities or supernaturals embodying the characteristics of various animals.
Read more about Olmec Religion: Rulers, Priests, and Shamans, Olmec Supernaturals, Continuity Hypothesis
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“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
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