NO. 8 LA VENTA CERAMIC COMPLEX DRUCKER 9 



In Other words, the Ohnec area constituted a dynamic focus of cul- 

 ture from earliest times, until about A.D. looo, when it mysteriously 

 dwindled away. 



The significance of this pictures lies in its flat contradiction of 

 the classic appraisal of Meso-American civilization in terms of a 

 single Mayan fountainhead of culture in which were evolved all the 

 higher attainments of the area, and from which in diminishing in- 

 tensity these complexes were dififused to backward neighbors whose 

 rudeness was directly correlated with their remoteness from the 

 "Mayan focus." The history of the Olmec indicates instead that the 

 culture growth of the area is more likely to have been the result of 

 interchanges between a number of local centers or foci, in each of 

 which inventions, or elaborations of imported traits, were developed 

 in accordance with local standards and then dififused or redififused 

 to neighboring provinces. 



National Geographic series in Mexican Archeology, No. i, 1940, which has been 

 amplified and extended to include Monte Alban masks by Covarrubias in his 

 recent contribution, "El Arte 'Olmeca' 6 de La Venta," 1946. 



