Olmec Essay

The Olmec civilization thrived from c. 1500 BC to 400 BC, in the modern day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. Due to lack of archaeological evidence, the Olmec’s origin of ethnic identity is unknown. There is such a lack of knowledge that researchers still are unaware of the name this group of people referred to themselves as. The title Olmec comes from, ‘Olmec-Xicalanca, which is the name of the multi-lingual traders of the Conquest Era, from the same region, and the name has stuck through the murky beginnings of unearthing this early Mesoamerican civilization. As archaeologists continue to discover more on the Olmec’s, it is becoming much more apparent that later Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Mayans and Aztecs, learned and
3500 BC to 2332 BC, when the civilization fell under control of Sargon Akkad(Kleiner 40). The Sumerians settled in the previously inhabited valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern day southern Iraq(Kliener 32). This region, known as the Fertile Crescent was named for the quarter moon shape of the region. The unusually fertile soil allowed the early civilization to be able to focus on more than just farming for food to survive, as the Sumerians developed irrigation canals for crops, and learned to control the floods. Along with developments in agriculture, they charted the earliest urban societies, referred to as city-states that were surprisingly complex for the time period(Kliener 31). While urban, Sumer was not a unified populations. Instead, the multiple regions were under the rule of different deities, and the rulers were these gods’ representatives on Earth. The rulers controlled all communal activities, including agriculture and food distribution. As a result of extensive agriculture innovation, only a select portion of the population had to farm, allowing others to develop skills in a multitude of areas. This began the advent of the urbanized society, with the shift from family to community responsibilities(Kliener