El Manatí "elongated man" style and are the oldest wooden artifacts yet found in Mexico. The rubber balls are also the earliest such items yet discovered and were possibly used in the Mesoamerican ballgame. The Olmec were a Pre-Columbian civilization living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, close to the border between the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The Olmec flourished during Mesoamerica's Formative period, dating roughly from as early as 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE. Pre-Olmec cultures had flourished in the area since about 2500 BCE, but by 1600-1500 BCE Early Olmec culture had emerged centered around the
The Olmec-Maya and Now maintaining bases in the United Kingdom and Jamaica. He was working towards the completion of another large series of paintings, "Shostakovich" (1969-1981), which was exhibited for the first time in October of that year. The paintings in "The Olmec-Maya and Now" combine abstract expressionism with figurative depictions of Olmec and Maya icons, symbols and artefacts. Williams' re-introduction of figurative elements into his paintings marked an important stylistic departure from his earlier work, such as the "Shostakovich" series, which was entirely abstract. Art critics Mel Gooding, Reyahn King and Leon Wainwright have noted that the fusion of abstraction and figuration challenged