By 1500 BC, the Olmec (“Rubber People”) civilization flourished on the southern end of the Gulf of Mexico. Settling in the lowlands, the Olmec captured the constantly flowing waters of the river bottoms to create a system of agriculture that produced substantial yields of maize, beans, and potatoes. Villages built on higher ground had ready access to the forest for hunting and gathering as well as fishing. With surplus food from agriculture, the culture grew to include craftsmen, especially stoneworkers that carved masks, statuary, and figurines in jade and basalt. Trade expanded in demand for obsidian for tools and luxury goods while Olmec philosophers discovered principles of writing and the mathematical concept of zero.
The Olmec were masters of the Mesoamerican ballgame that would be played for millennia, if not originating it themselves. The game consisted of a 4-1 rectangular walled court with the middle area narrowed to half the width of the end zones. Players worked to move solid rubber balls to score, in some games using on their hips, in others their hands, feet, or even paddles. Later, stone rings were installed into the walls as potential goals.
It was over one of these stone rings that workmen repairing a cracked wall threw a rope to create a rudimentary pulley. The Olmecs were well familiar with levers and inclined planes for construction and transporting huge stone blocks, but workmen grew frustrated attempting to move stone in the narrow central field of the ballcourt. By rolling a rope over the rounded edge of the ring, the workers lifted stone much more easily. They soon adapted a portable system, which proved even more effective with the pulley installed on an axle. Pulleys made quarries more efficient and capable of digging deeper before having to go to a new site. They also improved farming, allowing for faster loading and unloading from boats at docks. Demand for better ropes brought together new methods of spinning and laying with rubberized strands.
During the fourth century BC, a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions devastated the eastern range of the Olmec community. Rivers became silted, stymying the flow and turning rich farmland into stagnant swamps. Many Olmecs left, seeking better lands to settle, while others struggled on reduced resources. With limited manpower in the areas where water still flowed, workers sought to capture the work of the flow to boost their ability to lay rope and grind grain. At first, belted ropes with wooden drags were dropped into the rivers, where they would were raised up and made into a circuit by a series of pulleys. Within a few generations, the water-ropes gave way to waterwheels that powered early factories.
Following Olmec recovery, the dispersed peoples resumed communication by boat using pulleys to draw up sails for travel over longer distances. Trade and wars continued over centuries as the Olmec formed up a complicated relationship between other nations such as the Maya on the northeastern peninsula, the Mixtecs to the southwest, and the Aztecs to the northwest. Olmec ships traveled through the Caribbean and up and down the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts with trade goods and cheap manufactures. A few larger exploratory vessels even followed the warm Gulf Stream current across the North Atlantic to western Europe.
Olmec traders soon became an important arm of European trade routes, exchanging manufactured cloth and rubber for metal tools with Icelanders, Scots, Irish, Normans, Spanish, and Moors. The contact spurred Moorish traders to sail west with wares of their own, establishing a circular trade route that would eventually be eclipsed by European nations. The exchange introduced numerous new crops, medicines, and materials to both sides of the Atlantic, but it also caused a disease exchange that required centuries for recovery after introduction.
European attempts at colonization were sporadic in the Western Hemisphere, focusing mainly on the northern and southern ends outside of the expansive sphere of Mesoamerican influence. While other areas such as Peru, Mississippi, the Great Lakes Confederation, and Pomo grew up to outpace it in industry, the Olmec heartland remained the trade center of the West. The world, too, saw the Olmec land as a trade center serving as a valuable gateway to Asian markets across the isthmus. Olmec art and fashion stand out as one of the major styles recognizable on every continent with headdresses and vibrant skirts with high belts worn even over other cultures’ styles of trousers or robes. Leagues around the planet compete for the coveted Globe Cup in ballgame, the most widely played sport in the world.
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In reality, there does not seem to be archeological evidence of pulleys in Mesoamerican cultures. The Olmec population declined for reasons not fully understood, but its artisans left behind numerous relics, including pyramid complexes, ballcourts, and carvings.
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