Rubber tree ( hevea brasiliensis and castilla elastica )  , a tree which has dispersed from the Amazon basin and Central America, secretes a white liquid called latex. This liquid is processed and converted into rubber ready for commercial use. Today artificial rubber, manufactured out of petroleum and natural gas, is utilized as well as natural rubber. Rubber is primarily utilized in packaging industry and for the purpose of producing lorry, car and bicycle tyres.

It is thought that the word latex is derived from Latin word latex, meaning liquid. The root of this Latin word could be latax, meaning drop of wine in ancient Greek. It is greatly possible that the root of both words ultimately be lat, which means humid in Proto Indo-European language. Lat is the root of Lithuanian word latakas, meaning pool or puddle of water, and of Old Norse word leþja, meaning contamination.

English word rubber is derived from the verb rub, which denotes the action of erasing a writing error on a piece of paper or applying friction on a surface with hands. The meaning of white substance from tropical plants is first recorded in 1788. In this sense, it is the shortened form of India rubber, an expression only used for the purpose of denoting the natural rubber. The use of the word rubber was later extended to denote synthetic rubber, too.

A people who knew how to process latex for the purpose of obtaining rubber were living in Mesoamerica 3200 years ago. This people, known as the Olmec, is regarded as the first major Mesoamerican civilization. They appeared between 1200 and 400 BC in history. The word Olmec is abbreviation of the combination of Nahuatl word olli, meaning rubber, and another word in Nahuatl, mecatl, meaning a people. Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs used the word Olmec to refer to the rubber-growing societies living in the lowlands by the Gulf of Mexico some 2000 years after the Olmec civilization had died out. Artistic works belonging to the Olmec were found in these lowlands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and they were thought to belong to the societies the Aztecs used to call Olmecs. Subsequently it was found out that these relics belonged to a much older civilization. The term Olmec was then applied to refer to this ancient civilization. However, we don’t know how Olmecs called themselves.

Though a set of industrial methods are employed today to convert latex into durable rubber, the Olmec had learnt how to do this through a natural process. They first used to collect the latex oozing from rubber tree and obtain durable rubber by getting it to react with the sap of the night-blooming moonflower in the subsequent stage.  It is estimated that this method has been known in Mesoamerica since the 16^th century BC, which is even before the appearance of the Olmecs.

The most distinguishing feature of the Olmec civilization is the works of art that they produced. These works of art were produced with natural stones such as jade, greenstone and clay. Olmec artists were adept at creating human and human-like figures, as well as figures of animals. The best-known and interesting works of art created by the Olmec are 17 giant human heads found up to now. The heads feature a helmet figure on themselves. Another unique work of art by the Olmec is masks made of jade, depicting a human face or the face of a creature called werejaguar ( a half-human, half-jaguar creature found in the Olmec folklore ). Another unique work of art the Olmec created is statuettes called Kunz axes, which used to be used during rituals and depict werejaguars in a blatant manner.

The Olmec, as the first major Mesoamerican civilization, are thought to be the pioneers of some traditions in Mesoamerica; at least, it is being discussed whether those traditions have anything to do with the Olmec. One of them is the tradition of blood letting found in almost all Mesoamerican civilizations. Mesoamerican people used to cut a soft part of their bodies ( the tongue in general ) and let blood out, let the blood flowing onto a type of paper called amate and present this paper as a dedication to gods after burning it. Natural and ceramic stingray fish and maguey thorns found at Olmec sites seem to be substantiating this claim. There are also claims of the tradition of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica to have started with the Olmec. Skulls and child skeletons found in El Manati, a sacred marshland for the Olmec, estimated to have been used for votive reasons, have given the impression that children were presented as sacrifices to gods.

In addition, the Olmec might have created the oldest writing system of Mesoamerica and the Western Hemisphere. Though no discovery has been made as yet which would definitely reveal the Olmec writing and alphabet, the Cascajal Block, discovered at the end of the 1990s, is an important historical document with 62 glyphs on, claimed by some scholars to be a document written in an expressive language by the Olmec. The document is dated back to approximately 900 BC. If we are to think that the document was written in an expressive language, this would mean it is the oldest writing discovered in Mesoamerica so far. However, there are suspicions that the document not be reliable and historically valid since the glyphs on the document do not look like any other writing system in Mesoamerica. Apart from this, it is thought that the hieroglyphs called the Isthmian writing, dated back to later centuries, might have been written by the Olmec.

Ultimately, the Mesoamerican ballgame, called ollamaliztli in Nahuatl, pitz in Mayan languages, ulama in its modern version, might first have been played by the Olmec. Players had to hit the ball only with their hips in the first version of the game. The ball had to stay inside the game constantly. Later other versions of the game in which the ball could be hit by wooden sticks, rackets, stones were also played. The ball utilized during the game was also made of rubber and could weigh as heavy as 4 kgs. Many courts belonging to the Pre-Hispanic era where the game used to be played have been found. Though the game was most probably first played for purposes of entertainment, it later also became a barbaric competition tool in big banquets where human sacrifice was practised. In fact, many games after which human sacrifice wasn’t practised could turn into a ceremony rough and savage enough, too, since the ball with which the game used to be played was both very hard and heavy, which used to cause players to become seriously injured and in some cases, perish. In the words of Diego Durán, a Spanish chronicler who lived approximately 500 years ago, some injuries suffered during the game were so serious that they immediately needed to be lanced open to be treated. It is specified that players today playing ulama only with their hips are also suffering from permanent bruises and injuries.

The Olmec society was one organized in a stratified manner, where the priests, warriors and administrators had a privileged role. The administrators were regarded almost as the same as the gods and treated as such. To the Olmec, the jaguar was the most sacred animal. Eagles, snakes and sharks were other animals held sacred by them. The jaguar was such an important animal to the Olmec that the werejaguar, which was a creature half-human, half-jaguar, was embedded in their folklore and was reflected in their artistic works.

The Olmec mysteriously disappeared circa 400 BC. Though a variety of reasons such as war, famine, volcanic eruptions have been proposed for their disappearance, historians are yet to reach an agreement on the matter. The eastern part of the Olmec heartland was suddenly evicted between 400-350 BC and few people lived in that region until the 19^th century. Nevertheless, this ancient rubber people left a profound legacy in Mesoamerica in terms of culture and influenced the subsequent Mesoamerican civilizations greatly.