Timothy Potts: This case shows a group of jade and other precious greenstone materials that were found in a tomb at the Olmec site of La Venta.
Male Narrator: Timothy Potts:
Timothy Potts: To be buried with all this jade, which is so precious to the Olmec People, the person must have been someone very important.
[percussion with native flute evoking period and mood]
Male Narrator: Although the seated female figure is made of jade, her red hue comes from another precious material, red cinnabar, which covered the entire burial and was caked onto the sculpture. She wears a reflective disk of hematite—an iridescent mineral—on her chest. Mirrors, often made of hematite, were important conduits for supernatural forces, and therefore important ritual tools for Mesoamerican rulers. [music ends] Because the tomb also contained a full-size hematite mirror, scholars believe the sculpture may represent the deceased.
The standing jade figure, however, does not represent an actual person. Its almond-shaped eyes and downturned, toothless mouth suggest that it’s a supernatural being.
Timothy Potts: This was typical of Olmec representations. It’s not, in our sense, naturalistic. The limbs are elongated and rather simplified. It’s a beautifully stylized approach to the human figure.
And it makes a very nice contrast with the figure of the seated woman, which is much more naturalistic: the fingers are articulated, the feet, the features of the face, and the hair. So the Olmec people did know and were interested in representing the natural world in a more naturalistic way, but for certain subject matter, which was of a more religious and ideological nature and more ritual in purpose, they tended towards the more abstracted mode.
