Olmecs

The earliest state government in North or South America was the Olmec, who formed their state about 1200 BC. This is about the time of the Mycenaean kingdoms in Greece, or the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, or the Assyrians in West Asia. The Olmec (OHL-meck) lived between North America and South America, in Central America (what is now the southern part of Mexico).

This was good land for farming, with a big river bringing plenty of water, and people had recently begun to farm corn and beans there, about 2000 BC. Probably once people began to farm they had more kids, and there got to be a lot more people living in Central America than there had been before. As they got more crowded, they formed into villages, and then into towns, and then into cities, and soon some men emerged as their leaders, and they had formed a state.

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The earliest Olmec city was at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, near the Gulf Coast, in the foothills of the Tuxtla Mountains. It was built around 1150 BC.
The Olmec rulers got their people to build groups of big stone temples at Tenochtitlan and in several other places nearby. People used these temples to worship the Olmec gods, but they also use them (like Sumerian ziggurats) to store food and generally as government buildings. Very recent discoveries show that the Olmec used writing to record their thoughts on slabs of stone (like our gravestones).

The Olmec traded with other people all over South America. Archaeologists find Olmec pottery all over Central America and Mexico, and pottery from other people who lived nearby is also found in Olmec cities. Probably the Olmecs also traded tar, or bitumen - sticky black oily stuff like asphalt that you can use to patch boats and seal up roofs. Some of the trade was probably on boats that travelled up and down the rivers, and some of it was overland, carried by traders walking from city to city.

Around 900 BC, after three hundred years, the Olmec pretty much abandoned their main city at Tenochtitlan and moved their government to another city, which is now called La Venta. Possibly this was because of changes in the weather at this time, or it may have been because the river changed its course and the people moved to be near the new riverbed. Or, some people think it could have been because of a civil war or invasions.
The Olmec state continued to rule Central America for another five hundred years after this move, but by 400 BC the Olmec seem to have lost control of this area. Nobody knows how this happened, or why. As they lost control, new leaders like the Maya and the Zapotec gradually took over.

To find out more about South American history before 1500, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:

Ancient Rome (Eyewitness Books), by Simon James (2004). For kids.

Handbook of Mediterranean Roman Pottery, by John W. Hayes (1997). Hayes has been the leading expert on Roman pottery for the last several decades.

Roman Pottery, by Kevin Greene (1992). Greene is another pottery expert, particularly interested in what pottery can tell us about the Roman Economy.