Monte Alto is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

on the Pacific Coast in what is now

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

History

Barrigones of La Democracia Escuintla Guatemala

Located 20 km southeast from Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa in Escuintla, Monte Alto was occupied as early as 1800 BC, but has a fairly light presence – less than either El Bálsamo or Los Cerritos Sur located about 10 km west and east of Monte Alto respectively. During the Late Preclassic (400 BC to AD 200), Monte Alto became a regional center. The site has 45 major structures, the tallest being a 20 m high pyramid. The Monte Alto Culture is one of the oldest in

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

and perhaps predates the

Olmec The Olmecs () or Olmec were an early known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 Before the Common Era, BCE during Mesoamerica's Mesoamerican chronolog ...

. There is also a substantial Early Classic occupation but it is largely localized at Structure 6, a large platform located well to the northeast.

Art

Although Monte Alto is noted for its sculptures (heads and potbellies), more than a dozen tabular shaped stone stelae were found as well as three stone

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...

s. Two general styles of sculpture are found at the Monte Alto site, one representing a human head, and the other, a human body. Since both the heads and the bodies are rather crudely shaped from large, rounded basaltic boulders, the subjects have a decidedly corpulent appearance. Because they seem to be male figures, they have been termed " potbellies" in the

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

literature.

Alignments

Fifteen plain stelas were recorded at Monte Alto and one alignment of three large plain stelae erected in a north–south line could have served

astronomical Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...

purposes as a means for recording days and the position of the sun for

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

purposes. In fact, the

azimuth An azimuth (; from ) is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north, in a local or observer-centric spherical coordinate system. Mathematically, the relative position vector from an observer ( origin) to a point ...

from the principal

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

to the south stela marked the

winter solstice The winter solstice, or hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's geographical pole, poles reaches its maximum axial tilt, tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern Hemisphere, Northern and So ...

on December 21. The sun rose over the central stela on February 19: February 19 at midnight marked the eastern elongation of the Eta Draconis star in the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an Asterism (astronomy), asterism of an open cluster, open star cluster containing young Stellar classification#Class B, B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Tau ...

during the Late Preclassic period. According to Marion Popenoe de Hatch, Eta Draconis shows unusual stability, and, that from 1800 B.C. to A.D. 500, the annual date of its meridian midnight transit varied less than one day. She has shown that alignments of certain monuments at Takalik Abaj, also mark the eastern elongation of Eta Draconis at various periods during Tak'alik Abaj existence.

Magnetism

Many of the Monte Alto sculptures are magnetic as well. Since certain distinctive patterns of magnetism recur with some frequency, it would appear that the sculptures were executed by artisans who were aware of these properties. If this is true, the Monte Alto sculptures no doubt deserve recognition as the oldest known magnetic artifacts in the world. Of the collection of "potbellies" sculptures from Monte Alto on display in the town park of La Democracia,

and in front of its local museum, Museo Regional de Arqueología de la Democracia, four of the heads and three of the bodies were found to have magnetic properties. All four of the heads have a north magnetic pole located in their right temples, while three of them have south magnetic poles below the right ear and the fourth (that in front of the museum) has a south magnetic pole in its left temple. Such a pattern of occurrence is unlikely to be a matter of chance, even in a sample size as small as four.

Contemporary sites

During the Maya Preclassic period, the sites in the area that are contemporary to Monte Alto are Chiapa de Corzo (Mesoamerican site), Izapa, Abaj Takalik, and El Baul, along with such highland communities as Kaminaljuyu and Chalchuapa.John S. Henderson
''The World of the Ancient Maya.''
1997 p42

References

Famsi: Monte Alto (UTM 722341E, 1573508N) Parsons, Lee A. 1976 Excavation of Monte Alto, Escuintla, Guatemala In Research Reports: Abstracts and Reviews of Research during the Year 1968. pp. 325–332 National Geographic Society, Washington, DC Popenoe De Hatch, Marion 1989 A seriation of Monte Alto sculptures In New Frontiers in the Archaeology of the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica. Frederick Bove and Lynette Heller, eds. pp. 25–42 Anthropological Research Papers, 39 Arizona State University, Tempe

External links

Monte Alto Culture
{{authority control Mesoamerican cultures Archaeological sites in Guatemala Former populated places in Guatemala Formative period in the Americas