Olmec basalt head
Watercolour
©2021 Charlene Brown
I’ve finish another of the paintings of archaeological artifacts from the second millennium BCE that I mentioned in a September blog post.
The Olmecs, believed to be of West African origin, were the earliest known major meso-American civilization. They lived on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the area now in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The colossal heads the Olmec people carved, 17 of which have been un-earthed so far, ranged in height up to almost three and a half metres. They were made from volcanic basalt boulders transported some distance from the Sierra de los Tuxtlas mountains.
