Читать книгу Mesoamerican Archaeology - Группа авторов - Страница 44

For over two millennia the Formative inhabitants of the southern Gulf lowlands shaped and were shaped by the diverse and dynamic landscape of shifting rivers, muddy swamps, upland savannahs, dripping rainforests, and occasionally violent volcanoes. The lowland tropical environment – with its distinctive flora, fauna, and risks of flood, storm, drought, and pests – informed humans’ understandings of the world and their place in it. Like humans everywhere, the Pre-Olmec inhabitants constructed a landscape filled with meaning. As they adopted maize and other crops, they began to burn forests and clear plots of land while still relying heavily on the wild bounty of the region. Undoubtedly these early inhabitants imbued particular places with meaning derived from events and beliefs told and retold over generations (e.g., Basso 1996). By 1700 BCE pottery and exotic greenstone joined rubber and other perishable materials as offerings that created and recreated the sacred spring at the base of the Manatí salt dome, and by 1450 BCE the growing cluster of settlements in the middle Coatzacoalcos valley had built up mounds in the seasonally marshy floodplain and were beginning to shape the plateau of San Lorenzo into what would soon become the urban seat of powerful rulers. These early Olmecs created a new way of communicating and imposing meaning on places with monumental sculptures in their capital and in the administrative centers subject to them, which ultimately would be used to honor sacred places and claim important resources in the Olmec countryside. In so doing the rulers and subjects of San Lorenzo created both a city on a hill and an urbanized countryside that expressed the dominion of the capital. Throughout their history Olmecs and their Epi-Olmec successors would continue to shape the landscape physically and conceptually in ways that reinforced the philosophy of their political leaders, whether through ostentatious display and disposal of massive offerings by monarchical rulers in the heart of the La Venta polity or the negotiated balance among governing factions at Tres Zapotes.