Olmec heartland

The Olmec heartland is the southern portion of Mexico's Gulf Coast region between the Tuxtla mountains and the Olmec archaeological site of La Venta, extending roughly 80 km (50 mi) inland from the Gulf of Mexico coastline at its deepest. It is today, as it was during the height of the Olmec civilization, a tropical lowland forest environment, crossed by meandering rivers.

Most researchers consider the Olmec heartland to be the home of the Olmec culture which became widespread over Mesoamerica from 1400 BCE until roughly 400 BCE. The area is also referred to as Olman or the Olmec Metropolitan Zone.

The major heartland sites are:

  • San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán
  • La Venta
  • Tres Zapotes
  • Laguna de los Cerros - the least researched and least important of the major sites.
  • Smaller sites include:

  • El Manatí, an Olmec sacrificial bog.
  • El Azuzul, on the southern edge of the San Lorenzo area.
  • San Andrés, near La Venta.
  • Important heartland finds not associated with any archaeological site include:

  • "The Wrestler", a basalt statue found at Arroyo Sonso (see photo).
  • Olman (Greyhawk)

    The Olman are a fictional race of humans in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. They inhabit the southern fringes of the Flanaess and are primarily a tribal people, though in the past they commanded a great empire. The Olman are roughly modeled on the Aztec.

    Description

    Olman tend to have reddish-brown or dark brown skin-tones, and speak their own language. There is a theory that the Olman are directly related to their alternate-world cousins, the Aztec and other Central American natives. This is primarily because they worship the same pantheon of gods. How this cross-universe colonization from Earth to Oerth might have occurred, none can say.

    History

    Olman legend states that the Olman gods discovered Oerth and the Olman people c. -2400 CY. At that time, the Olman had not migrated from their homelands in Hepmonaland. Some 500 years later, the Olman began warring with the Touv people in the northern jungles of Hepmonaland.

    Greyhawk

    Greyhawk, also known as the World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & DragonsDave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign predates it by a few months—the world of Greyhawk was the setting most closely identified with the development of the game from 1972 until 2008. The world itself started as a simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of the game, as well as for RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000–2008.

    Early development

    In the late 1960s, Gary Gygax, a military history buff and pulp fantasy fan, started to add elements of fantasy into traditional tabletop medieval miniatures wargames at his games club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He sometimes replaced typical medieval weapons with magical spells, or used dragons and other fantastical monsters in place of soldiers. In 1971, as part of a rule set for tabletop battles called Chainmail that he was co-writing, he created supplementary rules for magical spells and monsters as well as one-on-one combat.

    Podcasts:

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    Blueberry Hill

    by: Yellowman

    I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill.
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    But all of the vows you made, were never to be.
    Though we're apart, you're part of me still.




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