Olmecs

The ancient Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica is known for their huge stone heads and related sculptures depicting human and animal figures, which have been drawing fascinated explorers, archaeologists and tourists to the region for decades. They also produced a lot of carved or painted rock art, and in a new study published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, an expert presents evidence of a previously unexplored connection between these two distinctive forms of Olmec artistic expression. According to Dr. Jill Mollenhauer, an art historian from Metropolitan State University in Denver who specializes in the study of Olmec art, Olmec elites had a hand in determining the themes that were explored by their culture’s skilled sculptors. This was expressed in the