The majority of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sites are located in present-day Mexico.

A. Pre-Classic Period

The major Pre-Classic cultures of Mexico were the Olmec and the western cultures of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit.

1. Olmec

Along the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the Olmec developed the first major Mesoamerican civilization, between about 1500 and 600 BC. Major ceremonial centers such as La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and San Lorenzo were located in the swampy jungle river basins of the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. Many of the most characteristic elements of Mesoamerican civilization originated with the Olmec and are especially evident at La Venta, which is this culture's best known spiritual, intellectual, and administrative capital.

La Venta, like most later Mesoamerican sites, is planned with a north-south orientation so that building doors open east to west, corresponding to the daily passage of the sun. A mounded-earth pyramid 30 m (100 ft) high, among the earliest in Mesoamerica, was constructed as the focal point of an axial arrangement of platform temples and plazas. This urban arrangement would become a common plan for later Mesoamerican ceremonial centers. The Olmec were the first to use stone architecturally and sculpturally, although it had to be laboriously quarried and transported from the Tuxtla Mountains 97 km (60 mi) to the west. Architectural stone mosaics also were created for the first time in the Americas.

The most impressive Olmec artifacts are colossal stone heads of males, about 2.7 m (about 9 ft) high, that are portraitlike in their realism. Large, detailed relief carvings depicting mythological deities or events have been discovered, as well as small, exquisitely carved, in-the-round sculptures of basalt or jade. Despite the importance of sculpture, however, it was not integrated with the architecture as it would be in later Mesoamerican civilizations. Isolated stone stelae, or slabs of rock, were erected to commemorate significant events, and they were inscribed with complex iconography, precursor to later Mesoamerican writing.

This stone head is one of 16 that have been attributed to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica (1500-300 BC). These monolithic works, ranging in height from 2.4-3.6 m (8-12 ft), are carved out of basalt and weigh about ten tons. Anthropologists are not sure if these are the heads of gods or rulers, but they all have similar features and wear circular helmets. Tom Owen Edmunds/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

Olmec art, like that of the Maya, is characterized by a high degree of naturalism. Emphasis is placed on the curvilinear rather than the rectilinear, thus encouraging fluid, rhythmic forms that seem more harmonious to a tropical locale than the stylized angular art that is commonly found in the relatively austere mountain valleys of central and southern Mexico.

The Olmec sphere of influence extended from the Gulf of Mexico coast (its heartland) through the highlands of Mexico, the Valley of Mexico, the Oaxaca region, and westward to Guerrero. Although pottery produced in the Olmec heartland was not distinguished, at the Olmec highland sites of Tlatica and Tlapacoyan are found hollow clay figurines, probably the first made, which are among the finest examples of Mesoamerican ceramic sculpture. The indigenous culture of Tlatica also produced vast numbers of very small individualized figurines of women with elaborate hairstyles and detailed body ornamentation. Their exaggerated female anatomy seems to indicate their use as fertility images.

In the Mexican states of Morelos and Guerrero, Olmec influence is seen in Xochipala clay figurines, in the cave painting at Oxtotitlan, in Guerrero, and in the reliefs carved on the cave walls at Chalcatzingo, in Morelos. The last two sites are dedicated to the cult of a jaguar deity, whose power and relation to ruling chiefs were the subject of most Olmec art.

2. Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit

In the late Pre-Classic and early Classic periods, major cultures developed in western Mexico. Once mistakenly called Tarascan, they are now referred to by the names of the Mexican states in which the sites are located: Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit.

No major architectural sites were constructed, and little stone sculpture was made, but some of the most accomplished Mesoamerican clay effigy pots and figurines were produced. At Ixtlán del Río in Nayarit, artisans created detailed genre sculptures depicting all aspects of village life. These negative-painted scenes (with unpainted figures defined by the painted background) possess the clarity and immediacy of photographs. Although less naturalistically dynamic and spontaneous, Colima figurines are also realistic, but are more monumental in form and essential in contour. Jalisco figurines are the most naive stylistically but are characterized by an arrestingly bold presence. The vital realism of western Mexican clay sculpture has made these artifacts among the most popular examples of pre-Columbian art. Because they were buried in deep underground shaft-and-chamber tombs, an unusually large number of pieces have survived.

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