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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 146 
ture of magnificent objects such as jade figurines and votive axes. 
The Ohnec art style is probably the most impressive ever developed in 
Mesoamerica and marks this as a great, unitary civilization. Olmec 
Culture is the full equivalent, both in the temporal and in the typo- 
logical sense, of Chavin in Peru, with which it was probably connected 
through long-range diffusion. In all its aspects, including the strange 
cult of a were- jaguar which was a rain deity, Olmec is the mother- 
civilization of Mesoamerica, a concept proposed some time ago by 
Caso, Covarrubias, and Stirling but only recently fully validated. Not 
only through diffusion into lesser tribal cultures, but also by means of 
outright imperialistic invasion of regions as distant as El Salvador, 
the Olmecs set their stamp upon southeastern Mesoamerica and stim- 
ulated the rise of later civilizations. 
New cultural integrations are seen in the Late Formative (ca. 300 
B.c.-A.D. 300) and the spread of civilized life into otherwise primi- 
tive areas. In and near the Valley of Oaxaca arose the Monte Alban 
I Culture, characterized by fine gray ceramics and by a sculptural 
and ceramic style that has many Olmec elements (e.g., the famous 
''Danzante" reliefs) (Bernal, 1958). Monte Alban I may have its 
origins in the Middle Formative, but by the close of the Formative 
its ceramics are found over an extensive area in the Mexican high- 
lands, from Puebla into Chiapas, 
From the point of view of cultural dynamics, of even more signifi- 
cance than Monte Alban I in the Late Formative was the Izapan civ- 
ilization, really an art style that reaches its highest development at 
Izapa, on the Pacific coast of Chiapas near the Guatemalan border 
(Stirling, 1943). The type site itself is a very large elite center with 
huge temple mounds faced with river boulders ; ceramically, it is 
closely related to such Late Formative phases as Chiapa V at Chiapa 
de Corzo and Miraflores in the Valley of Guatemala. The art style 
features large, cluttered, baroque scenes in bas-relief, which often 
have as subject matter the doings of a deity with long upper lip, 
clearly a rain god derived from the Olmec were- jaguar. Purely Iza- 
pan monuments are known at the famous Olmec site of Tres Zapotes, 
and it seems a reasonable assumption that the style itself originated 
in the Olmec area. Thus, Izapan civilization is probably the inter- 
mediary in time and space between the Middle Formative Olmec 
and the Classic Maya. In support of this assertion, we cite the style 
itself, which clearly foreshadows Early Classic Maya bas-reliefs ; the 
stela-altar complex, present for the first time at Izapa ; the long-lipped 
god who becomes the Maya Chac, or so-called "Long-Nosed God" 
(a misnomer) ; the succession of monuments in Izapan style, stretched 
