An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

possibly the recently recognized Caral culture of Peru (Solis et al. 2001), and the Gulf
Coast Olmec in Mesoamerica. The Early Formative inhabitants of San Lorenzo (c. 1500-
900 BC) were the only one of these antecedent societies to emerge in a forested, tropical,
lowland environment. The sui generis development of social complexity among the
inhabitants of the Southern Gulf Lowlands is believed to constitute an example for the
study of social theory both as a model and tool for evaluation. The uniqueness of their
appearance and environmental circumscription, plus the legacy of their cultural traits
adopted by subsequent Mesoamerican societies make investigation of their social
maturation critical to theorists (see Joyce 2004a; Kirchoff 1943).
Social theorists have constructed the Olmec paradigm in a number of ways. Some
have merged the Southern Gulf Lowland inhabitants into a monolithic entity and used
aggregated assumptions to support their models. Others have imposed Eurocentric
templates of emergent Old World cultures upon them. Still others have exploited specific
traits or characteristics to establish their hypotheses, but neglected to include either all the
applicable data available or have not considered extenuating circumstances that could
undermine their claims.
The following examples provide a sense of how the Olmec paradigm has been
incorporated into cross-cultural social theory and its significant impact upon the
discipline. All the entries center upon the emergence or development of social
complexity, and I have grouped them according to comparative or corroborative usage.
Most of the theoretical hypotheses have been based on limited interpretations of the
archaeological record, and are valid based on those specific interpretations. As noted
earlier, however, many of those judgments have been derived from assumption and
20