The Olmec flourished between about 1500 and 600 bc. San Lorenzo, their oldest known center, was destroyed around 900 bc. It was replaced by La Venta, a city built in an axial pattern that influenced urban development in Central America for centuries. A mounded earthen pyramid about 30 m (100 ft) high, among the earliest in Mesoamerica, was the center of a complex of temples and plazas.
The Olmec were the first to use stone architecturally and sculpturally, even though it had to be quarried in the Tuxtla Mountains of Veracruz. Their colossal basalt stone heads of males, about 2.7 m (9 ft) high and weigh as much as twenty tons, can be seen today at the open-air La Venta Park-Museum (Cost of one day pass $50 Mex. Pesos) in Villahermosa and at the Museum of Anthropology in Jalapa (Xalapa). Their writing, a numerical system, was the precursor of Mesoamerican writing. The Olmec civilization established patterns of culture that influenced its successors for centuries to come.
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