ML137997
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: George Stuart. Timecode In: 00:00:04. Timecode out: 00:32:45. Notes: Mesoamerican Archaeology; Matthew Stirling. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Split track. DS Let¿s begin by saying who you are and what you do. George Stuart [GS] :11 I¿m George Stuart and I¿m the chairman of the Committee for Research and Exploration at National Geographic Society. DS :17 We want to hear you tell the story of Matthew Stirling...let¿s begin by talking about the Olmec culture. And we have a lot of material to cover...when were these folks around? GS :36 These folks were around from about 1200BC until about 400 BC and that¿s about all we know about the span. We don¿t know much about their origins or demise. DS :48 What else was going on in the world during that time? GS :50 Oh Gosh, I guess they were trading around the Mediterranean, the Phenetians and all and the Minoan Civilization, Micenean. All these things were happening, the formation of classical Greece was going on. Homer was probably writing. It was an important time. Things were going on in China probably at a more accelerated pace than most of the world. DS 1:14 What was the Olmec culture? What was its importance in pre-hispanic Mexico? GS 1:20 It is important because it was early. In terms of Mesoamerica, which is that land of Southern Mexico and C. America where the cultures shared a certain similarity. We know it from the Aztecs and the Maya and all those people. But the Olmec were the first in there to start doing things that gave distinction to the area so long ago. They had everything that anybody else ever had except perhaps cities. DS 1:46 And we see some things in Maya and Aztec that were prefigured in Olmec. GS 1:52 We do, we see the ritual ballgame. We see the obsession with gods connected with rain, fertility, and sacred geography, mountinas, etc. We see the notion of pyramids and high ritual buildings, public plazas for ritual. We see the dependence on maize agriculture, corn, beans and squash. We see all these patterns that obtain to this day among a lot of peoples in terms of what they eat and what they believe in. DS 2:24 It was a big, physically, sprawling culture. GS 2:27 Well it occupied as far as we know, and we¿re still a little foggy on this, much of the area of coastal which now is the Vera Cruz state in Mexico adjourning parts of Tobasco state and all the way across the isthmus of Twantipec (?) into S. Guatemala. It¿s a pretty amazing stretched out area. And we know that they traded all over the place, so we¿re somewhat confused by trying to recognize what they traded with, where they lived. DS 2:54 And was this really the first culture that we see? GS 2:59 Well, it¿s the first sort of artistically stunning culture. The remains are spectacutlar, the sculptures, the carvings, the minor arts and crafts, even, are sort of great art. And wonderful. They carved jade like it was puddy. And they polished it and tehy traded it all over mesoamerica. They worked in stone and they worked in clays and they made plazas of various colors and things to enhance their architecture. DS 3:29 And they had to be pretty well organized to do all of that. GS 3:32 They had to be extremely well organized. Whoever led them in the various towns and estates must have had good control over the water and been very powerfule in terms of working the religions and acting as kind of an intermediary between the people and the supernatural world. In fact the rulers were probalby Shamans. DS 3:57 Does anybody have any idea how many people were in the culture in its golden age? GS 4:03 No idea whatsoever. The sites are few and far between and they¿re mostly underneath later things, so it¿s kind of confusing to get estimates. Because I don¿t think we have adequate samples for a population. ... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman