The Olmec Culture Analysis

The Olmec culture has associated their art with the jaguar. To them, the jaguar is a powerful and mysterious animal that they would worship. Infantile sculptures that were created by the Olmec were found in Mesoamerica. The sculptures are those of naked infants where the sex is usually not denoted. Some of the sculptures can be found with feline characteristics such as that of a jaguar’s mouth. There is speculation that the mouths of the figures appear to be of jaguars due to the similarity between pouting mouths of Indian infants and jaguars. The infantile sculptures seem to also have abnormal physical traits, such as a missing lower jaw or a neck that is almost nonexistent. This article provides more information towards the themes in the
Olmec art style. One of the most usual themes in their art is that of supernaturally transformed babies. This article provides examples of infantile sculptures that have jaguar like features. It also brings up the style of cleft heads since some of these sculptures also have cleft heads. This provides evidence that not only adult figures contained that cleft head, but also did child figures. A positive aspect of this article is that it brings up the possibility that the figures can be of those children or adults that have abnormalities. This could also provide evidence of what type of conditions people had back during the Olmec’s time. A negative aspect would be that the examples of abnormalities are assumed and there is not a real evidence that can correlate to these physical traits actually being shown in the figures.