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
Mayan languages mean "on (top of) the mountain". Thus in the Classical Quiché of the "Popol Vuh" we read "u-wach ulew" "on the earth" (literally "its face the earth"). Mayan languages are ergative in their alignment. This means that the subject of an intransitive verb is treated similarly to the object of a transitive verb, but differently from the subject of a transitive verb. Mayan languages have two sets of affixes that are attached to a verb to indicate the person of its arguments. One set (often referred to in Mayan grammars as set B) indicates the person of subjects of intransitive