La Venta Park, Tabasco--page 2 (of four pages)

Altars (Thrones)

Altar 6 with person emerging from a cave According to Nick Rider, the recurrent image of a figure, emerging from a cave, represents "Olmec priests or priest-lords emerging from the Underworld, the origin of gods and kings" (419).
Altar 5, front: Altar of the children
		The figure in the front, wearing a jaguar-skull headdress, holds a child, possibly dead. It has also been called a jaguar-baby, because the face, like many works by the Olmecs, has snarling, jaguar-like features. It has been suggested that Olmecs believed that in the mythic past, a woman had mated with a jaguar, thus creating a race of were-jaguars.
Altar 5, other views: Altar of the children On the sides four additional figures hold children, identified by some scholars as were-children because their heads are cleft and mouths are snarling. (The head of a jaguar is naturally indented.)
Triumphal Altar Here again a priest-lord is depicted at the entrance to the Underworld. This powerful figure holds ropes which are attached to the hands of prisoners, who he appears to be dragging toward the underworld. An outline of the jaguar head is on the cornice above the enclosed figure.
		Triumphal Altar--detail of captured prisoner
Dialog Altar This badly eroded altar repeats the usual theme--an important figure emerging from a cave or Underworld. Two bearded figures stand to the side.
Altar of the Owls A figure rises from a cave. The owls' heads must have some symbolic meaning.
	An eroded altar

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