The Olmecs moved stone heads weighing tens of tonnes more than 150 km, and nobody knows quite how. These basalt portraits of rulers, up to 3.4 m tall, wear helmets, perhaps for war or the ballgame.

1200 BC · 900 BC · apart: 300 years

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Rise of Olmec San Lorenzoc. 1200 BC · San Lorenzo. On the Gulf Coast of Mexico, San Lorenzo became the first great Olmec centre, famed for its colossal stone heads. The Olmecs are often called the 'mother culture' of later Mesoamerican civilisations.

12th century BC · 9th century BC

More amazing facts

• 1274 BC · 1945 Fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh, Egypt and the Hittites signed one of the oldest known peace treaties.
• 1250 BC · 1976 Ramesses II's mummy was never issued a passport — that's a myth.
• 1250 BC · 1899 China's oldest writing was ground up and swallowed as medicine.
• 1200 BC · 1936 The thylacine vanished from mainland Australia about 3,200 years ago, yet survived in Tasmania into the 20th century: the last one died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.
• 1200 BC · 1175 BC As the Bronze Age crumbled around the Mediterranean, Mesoamerica's first civilisation was rising: Olmec San Lorenzo flourished from about 1200 BC, while Egypt barely held off the Sea Peoples around 1175 BC.
• 1170 BC The first recorded strike took place in Egypt around 1170 BC. Royal tomb builders downed tools over late wheat rations — 'We are hungry!' The authorities heard them out, and work resumed the next day.

All amazing facts (1058) →