Why Were The Olmecs Such Lousy Sculptors?

Maybe Olmec sculpture wasn't intended to be a fascimile of the Olmecs. Perhaps the huge heads were idealizations.

I've only seen an Olmec scupture once -- at the Met in NYC -- and the head looked Mesoamerican. What do you mean by 'Asiastic'?
 
As in descended from people who crossed the Bering Strait from Asia.

Is this what you saw?

olmec1.jpg

Because that doesn't look Asian (or should we say Siberian?) to me.

olmec1.jpg
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Honestly. You'd think they'd never seen another Olmec the number of times they got Asiatic features wrong :rolleyes:

I had a friend whom had to make a bust of himself once, as a long nosed European he hit the problem with the nose, he needed to remove too much of the stone to get his real nose. So the bust got a smaller and relative broader nose. You see the same with the Greek statues, while Greek paintings on ceramic has noses like modern South Europeans, statues has the shorter more chararistic ancient Greek nose (straight and going almost straight down*).
If you look at the bone structure in Olmec sculptors you see it has higher cheekbones than are common among most Africans, but fit with Mesoamericans facial structure.

*While I have seen this kind of nose once among two brothers, I have never seen it in among anybody else, and I have visited Greece.
 
Perhaps because the Olmecs were about as Asian as Europeans are African.

Yes, the Olmecs, like pretty much all Amerindian people's came from Asia initially, but then Europeans (along with everyone else) came from Africa initially to.
Just because one group came from another place originally does'nt mean they're going to look like them continually.
 
As in descended from people who crossed the Bering Strait from Asia.

Is this what you saw?

[snip]

Because that doesn't look Asian (or should we say Siberian?) to me.

The Olmec head in the Met is similar, but only 2.5m to 3m tall. The Met Olmec head is round, not oblong.

Also, be aware that Mesoamericans often combined animal and human features in sculpture (i.e. Mayans created sculptures that combined jaguar features with human features.) I would avoid a literal perspective when evaluating Mesoamerican art of all eras.
 
Also, be aware that Mesoamericans often combined animal and human features in sculpture (i.e. Mayans created sculptures combining jaguar features with human features.) I would avoid a literal perspective when evaluating Mesoamerican art of all eras.
Generally, I think literally interpreting any art without context is probably likely to be rather useless.
 
People's physiological characteristics do vary across ethnic groups, they're is tendencies, but variations exist. I mean, do all French have large noses, of course not; just as much as Black guys with small penises and Latinas without an ass exist.

A very good friend of mine, a Slavdoran, looks very much like one of those Olmec statues. We tease him all the time and even bought him a mini replication of one; he's our 'Olmec Warrior'.:p
 
The "head" statuaries of Olmec culture possess a great sameness as if they depicted the same person/god/celebrity football player. Other statue figures do not have this sameness. Expert theories on Olmec origins are theory and lack the definitive stamp of being truth.

I've been reading Pinchbeck's 2012, but I don't have access to mushrooms and DMT to augment my consciousness. If I do find out that transdimensional beings have been interfering with human evolution, I'll get back to you.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Any One forgetting How the Maya look for comparison? You Know Brick Red Skin With Huge eff'n Honkers? It's most likely a symbolism/religious thing like the Jaguar Babies.

And could the Olmecs have been descended from Polynesians?
Polynesians didn't exist back then.
 
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