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THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING progenitors of later Mesoamerican kingdoms and empires; but there is little evidence that the Olmec themselves ever created an infrastruc- ture for dominating a large population. So far as anyone knows, their rulers did not command a stable military or administrative apparatus that might have allowed them to extend their power throughout a wider hinterland. Instead, they presided over a remarkable spread of cultural influence radiating from ceremonial centres, which may only have been densely occupied on specific occasions (such as ritual ball games) scheduled in concert with the demands of the agricultural cal- endar, and largely empty at other times of year. In other words, if these were ‘states’ in any sense at all, then they are probably best defined as seasonal versions of what Clifford Geertz once called ‘theatre states’, where organized power was realized only periodically, in grand but fleeting spectacles. Anything we might con- sider ‘statecraft’, from diplomacy to the stockpiling of resources, existed in order to facilitate the rituals, rather than the other way round.*