This ancient sculpture has been named “The Wrestler.” Scholars think it probably isn’t a wrestler, but it looks like a wrestler warming up for a match. It dates from 1,500 B.C. to 400 B.C.–which is to say they have no idea how old it is. All that can be said for sure is that it’s a piece of great art.
It comes from the Olmec civilization, on the east coast of Mexico–which was not its name, it was a name the Aztecs gave to people living in the country 2,000 years later, we only use it now for convenience: we do not know what the “Olmecs” called themselves.
They had writing that we cannot read today. They had beautiful paintings which we cannot understand. They invented a rubber ball game that was played throughout Central America until modern times. We do not know a single word of their language, we don’t know the name of anyone who lived there, we have no historical record of what the Olmecs did, or achieved, or failed to do. The quality of their art insists on a high level of civilization. Their buildings were ambitious.
Obviously it was a great civilization. And yet we know nothing, nothing at all, about it. Probably it influenced later civilizations in the area. But in what ways, we don’t know.
The “Olmecs” are gone, leaving behind the works of their hands but nothing else.
A civilization dies, and is erased from history? Yes, it can happen. And yes, it has.
In our digital age people think our stored information is invincible but a EMP would wipe it our in a flash – bye bye digital age.
Bye-bye lots of us, too. We are terribly, fearfully, vulnerable.
Lee nails it. Our digital world is a house of cards.
These disappeared high civilizations should serve as parables for us. But alas, they don’t.
Yes, they should. They are so far gone, we don’t have the name of even one person who lived there–probably out of millions. We have no way of knowing WHY they failed; no one has written their history. But just knowing that it happened ought to warn us that it can.
Pretty interesting about the Olmecs. I would guess they influenced the Mayans, who were probably the most advanced of the native people. They also had a writing system although it was similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
There’s a gap, though, between the Olmecs going out of business and the Mayans starting up. But some think that the Olmecs were never forgotten.
There is a huge gap in our knowledge of world history. And certainly, in South America. You can start with these two articles.
Myth of pristine Amazon rainforest busted as old cities reappear | New Scientist
Long lost cities in the Amazon were once home to millions of people | New Scientist
Besides these articles, there are other records of large cities and advanced civilizations still in existence in South America when the Europeans arrived in the “New World.”