Early Reports on the Olmec
Marshall Saville, 1929
Marshall Saville, an archaeologist at Columbia University, wrote two articles on votive axes from Mexico. Stylistically, the axes seemed related to other carved artifacts found in Veracruz and Tabasco, a region inhabited in post-colonial times by a group of people called Olmec. While scholars at the time still did not know who had produced the axes and other artifacts, Saville applied the name Olmec to the style of those objects. He was the first to do so, despite the fact that it may be confusing since there is no association with the historic Olmec, but the name seems to have stuck, none the less.
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