Title: El Manatí
Description: "Brief, popular description of a site on the Río Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz where ritual offerings were continuously buried for several centuries during the early formative period. The most spectacular finds - a series of unique wooden sculptures preserved as a result of water-logging - are in the Olmec style and date to the period around 1200 BC when San Lorenzo was the region's dominant Olmec center. Other offerings include bits of rubber balls, fragments of stone mortars and grain-grinding slabs, axes, greenstone beads, and pottery vessels.  Fire-cracked rock suggests that burning, perhaps food preparation, formed part of the ceremonies, which to judge by pottery remains, may have begun as early as 1500 or 1600 BC, in pre-Olmec times"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.
Subjects: Antiquities, Olmec pottery, Olmec sculpture, Olmecs
Places: Coatzacoalcos River Valley, Coatzacoalcos River Valley (Mexico), Manatí Site (Mexico), Mexico