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.
