page_title: Olmec religion
section_title: Olmec Dragon (God I)
hierarchical_section_title: Olmec religion / Olmec supernaturals / Olmec Dragon (God I)
caption_attribution_description: English: Monument 52, seated Olmec were-jaguar sculpture from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, Veracruz. Now in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. It was buried deep at the head of an ancient drainage system, and the long deep grove carved into the back of this sculpture associates it with the god of rain and water. Height 90cm.
context_page_description: The religion of the Olmec people significantly influenced the social development and mythological world view of Mesoamerica. Scholars have seen echoes of Olmec supernatural in the subsequent religions and mythologies of nearly all later pre-Columbian era cultures.
  The first Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs, developed on present-day Mexico southern Gulf Coast in the centuries before 1200 BCE. The culture lasted until roughly 400 BCE, at which time their center of La Venta lay abandoned. The Olmec culture is often considered a "mother culture" to later Mesoamerican cultures.
  There is no surviving direct account of the Olmec's religious beliefs, unlike the Mayan Popol Vuh, or the Aztecs with their many codices and conquistador accounts. Archaeologists, therefore, have had to rely on other techniques to reconstruct Olmec beliefs, most prominently:
  Typological analysis of Olmec iconography and art.
  Comparison to later, better documented pre-Columbian cultures.
  Comparison to modern-day cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  The latter two techniques assume that there is a continuity extending from Olmec times through later Mesoamerican cultures to the present day.
context_section_description: Also known as the Earth Monster, the Olmec Dragon has flame eyebrows, a bulbous nose, and bifurcated tongue.  When viewed from the front, the Olmec Dragon has trough-shaped eyes; when viewed in profile, the eyes are L-shaped.  Fangs are prominent, often rendered as an upside-down U-shaped bracket.  With the Bird Monster, the Olmec Dragon is one of the most commonly depicted supernaturals.
  Miller & Taube differentiate a Personified Earth Cave, equating it with Joralmon's God I-B.
caption: Monument 52 from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán. Some researchers identify this figure as the were-jaguar while others state that it instead represents the Rain Deity. The long deep groove carved into the back of this basalt sculpture indicates it was part of the drainage system.
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