Tak'alik Ab'aj': Cultural transition from Olmec to Maya.

This image is from a monument (stelae 4) from Takalik Abaj.

At the center of this image is a serpent surrounded by smoke. The serpent ascends up-ward from a fire coming from a offering bowl and a symbolic Earpool of jade.

The serpent's body entwines around a flower at the center of the composition. This flower is symbol for K’in(Sun) and is marked by several curling projections, each of which bears a set of tubular jade beads. This beads symbolize breath.

Emerging out of the toothy upper jaw of the serpent is the head of an ancestor who wears a earspool jade bead and jade beads in his nose as well.

There seemed to be relationship of jade earspools as symbols of breath, wind, and supernatural serpents.

The watery band at the base of the composition is framed by Witz ( Mountain) faces with flower headdresses. , Their open jaws spew forth water on each side of the bowl.

This an artistic expression of the journey of an ancestor and the sun, together making their way along the celestial road, beginning from the watery depths of the underworld.

Tak'alik Ab'aj' is located in the modern day municipality of El Asintal, Department of Retalhuleu, in southwest Guatemala. The initial occupation of the settlement is said to have occurred at some point during the 2500–1200 BC. Archaeologists have indicated that at some point in 900 to 400 BC the city became a socioeconomic and political power.

Although we do not yet know the original name of this city today we know it as Tak’alik Ab'aj' (“Standing Stone" in Maya K’iche’). American archaeologist Edwin Shook in the 1970s, called it Abaj Takalik. This was grammatically incorrect in K’iche’ and now has been officially corrected to Tak'alik Ab'aj'.

The name refers to the great quantity of stelae found there. A stelae is an upright stone slab or column typically bearing a commemorative inscription or relief design. Although stelae are also found in Olmec cities, they are a hallmark of Ancient Maya civilization. About three hundred and twenty six stone monuments have been registered at the site, with one hundred twenty four noted as carved. This assembly of stelae is considered one of the most eclectic in all of Mesoamerica and an important component of the corpus of Mesoamerican stone sculpture.

The carved monuments at Tak'alik Ab'aj' contain an evolutionary record of changing social complexity, political interaction, and ideological practices. Most importantly an Olmec to Maya cultural transition.

There is clear evidence that before the 400 BC Tak'alik Ab'aj' was influenced by the Olmec, then we see the change to more Maya artwork and monument style. This time period also aligns with the downfall of one of the last great Olmecs cities, La Venta.

You may have noticed that this is the second time we have mentioned the Olmec in our Ancient Maya Cities series. It's very clear that the civilization archaeologically known as the Olmec, a mixe-zoquean speaking people, were interacting with the Pre-classic Maya through a significant exchange of culture and trade. The Olmec are known by this name due to the area from which they founded their first cities. The much later people known as the Mexica (Aztec) referred to that area as the Olman, meaning the “land of rubber” because of the vast amount of rubber being produced there . This area is in the gulf coast of modern day Mexico , within the modern Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz. There they founded the great cites known today as La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and San Lorenzo.

The Olmecs have been described as mysterious, but as new research is done we have begun to have a much more clear picture. Ann Cyphers, an academic at the Institute of Anthropological Research has carried out studies of mitochondrial DNA that prove the identity of the Olmecs. In two burials, DNA from human remains were sampled: one from Loma del Zapote (dating from 1,200 BC) and another in San Lorenzo (1,000 BC). From these two individuals, a bone sample was taken from the rib and underwent a procedure to obtain their mitochondrial DNA, the lineage that the mother provides to an individual, because it is more feasible to recover it from archaeological remains.This is how it was managed to classify that genetic information, called haplogroup. The genetic diversity of mitochondrial DNA can be classified according to the similarities that exist in various individuals, and they may share some mutations that make them different from other individuals in different geographic regions of the world.These differences make it possible to define which group they belong to, and thus mitochondrial DNA is classified into haplogroups. They were able to obtain the haplogroup of these two subjects and it has been learned that they belong to A, one of the most abundant among the founding and modern day indigenous populations of America.

In these Olmec cities the art can be seen to have many of the elements we know are fundamental to later cosmology of Mesoamerica cultures like transformation, twins, caves as the entrance to the underworld, Sustenance Mountain as the origin place of corn, and the importance of the connection to ancestor as evidenced in burial practices. It is easy to see why they are often regarded as the Mother culture of Meso-america. This theory is now being challenged as further studies are conducted in the Pre-classic Maya cities that reveal a much more complex mutual exchange of influence.

It has been well documented that Tak'alik Ab’aj played a major role in the obsidian trade from the very earliest of times. This provided extensive trade networks that stretched as far as Mexico’s Veracruz state (Olmec), El Salvador and the Petén lowlands (Maya). Archaeologists believe Takalik Abaj was a cosmopolitan city and a crossroads of peoples and styles. The Olmec are just one major trade partner that we can see major influence from. How and why the city of Tak’alik Ab’aj’ eventually ceded influence to the Maya remains unclear.

Archaeologist Christa Schieber, a Tak’alik Ab’aj’ research director, believes that a tomb of a lord discovered inTak'alik Ab'aj' holds the answer. Dubbed the Vulture Lord because of a vulture-headed figure in jade that hung around his neck. This Vulture lord offers new insights into how the transition from Maya to Olmec may have happened.

She says in Archaeology magazine :

“This period, around 500 B.C., was a period of transition. In the stonework at the site’s ceremonial platforms you can see how sculptors were gradually changing their minds and treating the stone in a different way, moving away from the Olmec style.” It’s notable, too, explains Schieber, that all but two of Takalik Abaj’s 354 stone monuments were locally quarried, and that the ceramics were fashioned from local materials. This suggests that the cultural changes were not the result of the arrival of a foreign population , but of that of local artisans changing the way they made objects as outside cultural influences seeped in.

According to Schieber , the Vulture Lord’s tomb is a bridge between the two styles, with the Olmec becoming obsolete during his reign. “He was a very rich ruler who still had Olmec traditions” she says. “But he was already showing Maya stylistic influences in the things he took to the grave.” For example, while the vulture and the ceramic women look Maya. One of these women figures had a tattoo that is an exact match to a mural pattern at another preclassic Maya site of San Bartolo” (which we will discuss) says Schieber—the jade ornaments on the deceased’s body closely resemble those on a ruler depicted in stone at the Olmec city of La Venta.

The shifts in motifs and styles are not simply a matter of changing fashions, says Schieber, they also reflect shifts in ideology and political allegiances that we can barely understand today. Since it is a ruler that is buried with this evidence, it signals the dominant style is changing with him, and that suggests that the rise of Maya influence had a political stamp, that change was led from above, and that his people followed.

Through different artifacts shortly after this time period helps us detect that the transition from Olmec to Maya was complete . The Olmec archeological signal goes silent after this. From its origins around 1500-1400 BCE, the Olmec civilization would decline until around 400 BCE when it was superseded by other civilizations.

From what we have learned is that cultures do not just disappear, they most likely evolve, change , adapt, and or combine.

The main region of the Olmec faced severe depopulation around this time. It is a proposed theory that people left the region to other nearby emerging civilizations such as the Maya and Zapotec. These people leaving these cities merge with the existing populations.

While prior theories suggested a rapid decline all at once, recent historians believe that it was more of a gradual decline. It is well known that the cultural centers existed in phases. For instance, the San Lorenzo site was largely abandoned by around 900 BCE. Afterwards, La Venta became the chief cultural center until its abandonment around 400 BCE.

There are many other speculative reasons as to why the Olmec civilization changed or collapsed. Some believe that a change in climate and weather patterns caused the general abandonment of the region.

Increased volcanic activity may have covered the area with ash and made the area temporarily uninhabitable. In addition, rivers that were crucial to everyday life may have faced drastic changes . This was due to the Olmec agricultural practices, including slash and burn tactics that exposed the area to increased soil erosion.

The most likely scenario is that the emergence of other civilizations such as the Zapotec and Maya caused the extensive Olmec trade networks to divert away from them. With less goods and wealth coming to the Olmec, the civilization faced internal strife as rulers struggled to maintain control of their subjects.

Although the Olmec civilization seemed to fade away, its contributions to the future of Mesoamerica cannot be understated. The Olmec’s numerous discoveries and cultural contributions can be seen in a variety of ways through future cultures such as the Zapotec, Maya, and Aztec.

With the Olmec downfall, the trade routes began to shift. The trade network was concentrated in a lineal route that ran along the Boca Costa region in Guatemala that connected to the Olmec lands on one side and all the way to modern El Salvador on the other. By the beginning of the Late Preclassic period, trade nexuses were switched to the Maya groups, with a strong orientation towards Kaminal Juyu in the Guatemalan Highlands. The commercial route was essentially the same, except for the fact that Kaminal Juyu and its trade connections with the Motagua basin were integrated into the network. At this time and afterward Takllik Abaj was under complete Maya influence.

As mentioned before this transition can clearly be seen in the archeological record. The Vulture Lord signals a change in culture. Signals that begin to show up in burials, more specifically in the ceramics. Ceramics are the best way archeologists can detect a cultural change. A change in ceramics like ceremonial incense burners, plates, drinking vessels have distinct styles that are specific to a cultural group. In Tak'alik Ab'aj' we can see how Olmec style ceramics changed to more pre-classic Maya.

The population of Tak’alik Ab’aj stayed there uninterrupted well into the Post-Classic, despite the several changes occurring with their commercial partners. When we study further periods in Maya history we will see that in the Late Classic, the cultural landscape turned into a mosaic of independent centers in the south coast and the highlands, all of them interacting, or as we shall see in this case, competing with one another for territory and resources.

Therefore, the pottery at Tak’alik Ab’aj shows a continued evolution since its earliest occupation, throughout its entire trajectory, and up to the end of the Late Classic period, reflected in a ceramic tradition.

It's important to state that as these cities expanded and rose to power they would become more multi linguistic and multicultural.

However, by the time the Spanish arrived the city was already abandoned.

There is no doubt that Taklik Abaj at some point after 400BC was Maya and continued to be Maya for a long time after. Their astronomy, artwork, ceramics, political organization, and agriculture are now recognized as Maya. Like Kaminal Juyu, this city is an origin city, and like Kaminal Juyu, it begins to expand its influence throughout the region. These cities begin to spread the Maya culture and practices that will lead us out of the preclassic period into the more well known classic period.

Join us next time as we continue to explore great cities of the Preclassic era, and we focus on Izapa. Stay tuned!!