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Olmec and Chavin: Rejoinder to Lanning*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
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Abstract

The maize design on a bottle from Kotosh is unusual for its time and place in its choice of subject matter and mode of depiction, and a previous statement that the motif might be of Olmec origin is defended. Lanning's attack on past arguments for early diffusion from Mesoamerica to Peru is countered by questioning (a) the role of the Intermediate area and lowland South America as alternative sources for the observed similarities, (b) the nature of unpublished data, (c) the age of the architectural complex at Las Haldas, (d) the likelihood of establishing final “proofs” or full chronological contexts, and (e) the reasoning of the “wait-until-all-the-facts-are-in” school. It is proposed that hypotheses are not assumptions but concepts subject to change which are ever attempting to explain large bodies of data. Such a hypothesis is that which originates New World civilization on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, and a revision of this hypothesis is made which accounts for the Chavin civilization as the result of a fusion of intrusive Olmec art and religion with an older, native-Peruvian tradition based on fabric construction and the worship of the condor and serpent.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , July 1963 , pp. 101 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1963

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Edward P. Lanning for his kindness in forwarding his reply to me in ample time to prepare a rejoinder. I am also indebted to Irving Rouse for reading a preliminary draft of this rejoinder and suggesting revisions, although I take full responsibility for it in its final form.

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