Something I read this year said they were thinking even further back, 1400BC. That early date starts to conflict with the Shang Chinese theory though.
The Initial Olmec Period is shown as 1,200-900 B.C. with its capital at San Lorenzo, which experienced cultural collapse around 900. There were "outrigger" settlements at places like La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros and maybe Tres Zapotes at that time. The same researchers say La Venta began to flourish around 1,000 B.C. Some believe its' influence continued to as late as 400 or 300.
What they call the Terminal Olmec and Epi-Olmec period ran from about 600 B.C. to A.D. 1. They say: "True Olmec culture drew to a close by 300 B.C., but a derived, epigonal culture survived north of the Tuxtla Mountains at Tres Zapotes...Ironically, although Tres Zapotes was the first Olmec site known, the nature of its Olmec occupation remains unresolved."
By reading several authors with varying points of view, it seems clear to me that what is called "Olmec" is subject to a lot of interpretation. Much evidence has either been destroyed or is yet undiscovered. My impression is that the archaeology to date has been pretty haphazard, probably due to economics. But the wet climate has also taken a big toll because much Olmec art and architecture were made of now-rotted wood. Usable stone was scarce in the La Venta region.
Olmec Indians: 1200BC- 600ADMany early scholars were reluctant to believe that a society as sophisticated as the Olmec could have developed in the tropical habitat of the Gulf coast, and some hypothesized that the Olmec had originally migrated from elsewhere... radiocarbon dates inform us that La Venta and San Lorenzo were inhabited as early as 1700 B.C., by peoples who were the direct ancestors to the Gulf coast. They were corn farmers who supplemented their diets with fishing and hunting. Linguists suggest that they spoke a language related to the Mixe and Zoque languages of today... At La Venta we can see that after 900 B.C. such platform mounds were arranged around large plaza areas and include a new type of architecture, a tall pyramid mound. An important feature at Olmec centers was their buried network of stone "drain" lines -- long U-shaped rectangular blocks of basalt laid end to end and covered with capstones. The new San Lorenzo research suggests those systems were actually aqueducts used to provide drinking water to the different areas of the settlement. Some of the aqueduct stones, such as San Lorenzo Monument 52, were also monuments, indicating that the aqueduct system had a sacred character as well.
CrystalinksThe Olmec and the ShangLast year, in a book entitled Origin of the Olmec Civilization, Professor Mike Xu, a Chinese who teaches in the foreign languages department at the University of Central Oklahoma, proposed a hypothesis which aroused a storm of controversy in archeological circles. In Xu's view, the first complex culture in Mesoamerica may have come into existence with the help of a group of Chinese who fled across the seas as refugees at the end of the Shang dynasty. The Olmec civilization arose around 1200 BC, which coincides with the time when King Wu of Zhou attacked and defeated King Zhou, the last Shang ruler, bringing his dynasty to a close.
by Claire Liu
tr. by Robert Taylor