🔮 La Venta Stela 3, known as "The Bearded Man" of the Olmec Preclassic (700–400 BC), depicts a single elaborately costumed figure. David Grove proposed an eight-supernatural Olmec pantheon in the 1970s, drawing on Olmec iconography including figures like the Lord of Las Bocas. Recent LiDAR surveys have revealed 200+ additional major Olmec platforms awaiting investigation.
Olmec religion: ancestor worship, no identifiable pantheon
MexicoGeneral
Key facts
- La Venta Stela 3 shows two Olmec lords facing each other with three floating figures in headdresses above each lord
- La Venta Stela 2 shows a lord surrounded by smaller floating figures holding the same scepter, interpreted as conjured ancestors
- Archaeologist David Grove proposed in the 1970s an eight-god Olmec pantheon based largely on the Lord of Las Bocas statue found by local farmers in 1965 at the village of Las Bocas
- The Lord of Las Bocas statue was stolen from the Xalapa museum in 1970 and recovered in a San Antonio, Texas hotel room
- Grove's proposed gods include the banded eye god, bird monster, Olmec dragon (later called earth monster), shark/fish god, maize god, rain god, feathered serpent, and were-jaguar
- None of the 17 known colossal heads display supernatural features; they show distinct but regular human faces with unique headdress designs
- Recent LiDAR studies identified an additional 200 major Olmec platforms in the swampy lowlands of Veracruz and Tabasco, potentially holding answers about Olmec religion
Site mentioned
Sources
La venta stela 3 hi-res stock photography and imagesalamy.com
RM 2C8R3D5–The Bearded Man, Stela 3, from the Olmec ruins of La Venta. Preclassic Period (700-400 B.C.). La Venta Museum, Villahermosa, Mexico.
Offering #4, La Ventasmarthistory.org
Offering #4 from La Venta is perhaps the most dramatic assemblage of Olmec small stone figures yet discovered. As found in situ (in the original place and ...
La Venta Stela 3. (Studyblue.org 2015)researchgate.net
The Olmec civilization has long been considered to be the Jaredite civilization. New evidence is presented here that provides a reliable correlation of ...
La Ventaen.wikipedia.org
La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco.
La Venta: Stone Sculpturemetmuseum.org
La Venta's large stone sculpture was made of basalt from the Tuxtla Mountains far to the north. The Olmec transported these massive basalt ...
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