Villahermosa - Parque-Museo de La Venta

The archaeological open-air museum, the Parque-Museo de La Venta, is situated on the south-west shore of the Laguna de las Ilusiones. In this tropical park, monumental finds from the Olmec civilisation (golden period 1200-400 bc), such as altars, stelae and animal sculptures are displayed, and, most significantly of all, the famous colossal heads from La Venta (Note: the items displayed are changed from time to time). A start has been made to produce reproductions of the original pieces out of synthetic materials to replace the originals in order to protect these from the unavoidable processes of weathering. The Tabasco-born anthropologist Carlos Pellicer has here managed in a highly impressive fashion to present to the general public the relics of a great civilisation in an appropriate environment. The places where the finds were originally made are located in inaccessible marshland areas in the states of Tabasco and Veracruz. There are many archaeologists who consider that all the civilisations of Meso-America originate in the Olmecs. What is certain is that this mysterious people represents the oldest known civilisation in Mexico, and one which exerted a powerful influence over large parts of the country. As far as we know, the Olmecs were the first people, apart from the proto-Zapotecs, to develop glyphic script and to use numbers; in this respect they can be viewed as precursors of the Mayas. Their oldest known dating up to the present time (31 bc) is to be found on stela C in Tres Zapotes. They did not just create magnificent large sculptures but were also true masters in the fine art of modelling clay figures and the elaborate crafting of jade. Besides La Venta, mention should be made of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, Tres Zapotes and Cerro de las Mesas as being important places in the Olmec region where finds have been made.

To this day it is still unexplained how these people managed to move these colossal heads shaped out of basalt, which could weigh anything up to 20 tons and were up to 3 m (10 ft) high. The quarry which was used is actually some 120km/75mi from La Venta. Some of the faces chiselled out of the stone have negroid features, while in other examples human characteristics are mixed with those of the jaguar. The appearance of these faces, which seem so un-Indian, has led to the wildest theories. Thus there are many people who maintain that these colossal faces are actually representations of Nubian princes who were sent westwards by Ramses III of Egypt in search of the underworld and ended up by landing here. Others on the other hand seek to see in them the depiction of rulers from the prehistoric megalith civilisations of southern England and northern France. It has to be said, however, that there is not the slightest evidence for any of these hypotheses.

Monkeys, deer, jaguars (including two magnificennt black specimens), crocodiles and snakes can be seen in the small zoo within the park.