The Olmecs

Episode 29-35, 38-39 - I don't know that the Burning Shield was based on this mountain as others have proposed, but I guess it is as good as any.

La Malinche México 19.23°N, 98.03°W; summit elev. 4,503 m La Malinche is an eroded stratovolcano, cut by deep canyons, that rises NE of the city of Puebla. Malinche occupies an isolated position between the Popocatepetl-Iztaccihuatl and Orizaba-Cofre de Perote volcanic ranges. Much of the andesitic-dacitic volcano was constructed during the Pleistocene, and the summit exhibits evidence of glacial erosion. However, recent work has identified tephra layers of Holocene age that originated from Malinche. Several tuff cones and explosion craters are found on the flanks of Malinche, at least one of Holocene age.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/gvp/volcano/region14/mexico/malinche/var.htm

Episode 29-39 - Okay, so the real Olmecs didn't really look like those portrayed in MCoG, but they definitely had some unusual art. This grouping, unique in Olmec art, was found buried at La Venta and has been dated between 850 and 450 B.C. Just what it represents is uncertain.

Olmec, indigenous people of Mesoamerica, who established one of the region's first major civilizations. They lived along the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico, just west of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the swampy jungle river basins of the present-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. Over time, they extended their influence through the highlands of Mexico; the Valley of Mexico; Oaxaca; and westwards to Guerrero. The Olmec flourished between about 1500 and 600 BC. San Lorenzo, their oldest known center, was destroyed around 900 BC. It was replaced by La Venta, a city built in an axial pattern that influenced urban development in Central America for centuries. A mounded earthen pyramid about 30 m (about 100 ft) high, among the earliest in Mesoamerica, was the center of a complex of temples and plazas.

The Olmec were among the first Mesoamerican peoples to use stone in sculpture and architecture, even though it had to be quarried in distant mountains. Their colossal stone heads of males, about 2.7 m (about 9 ft) high, can be seen today, along with other Olmec artifacts, in the Mexican city of Villahermosa. Olmec writing, a numerical system, was the precursor of other Mesoamerican forms of writing. The Olmec civilization established patterns of culture that influenced its successors for centuries to come.

Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Episode 34 - Mendoza aides the Mayas in their attack against the Olmecs by constructing large battle towers to attack the castle-like Burning Shield.

Siege Tower, A siege tower is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders whilst approaching the defensive walls of a fortification. The tower was often rectangular with four wheels and a height roughly equal to that of the wall or sometimes higher to allow archers to stand on top of the tower and fire into the fortification.

Used throughout antiquity in both the far east and Europe, siege towers were of unwieldy dimensions and therefore mostly constructed on site of the siege. Taking a lot of time to construct, siege towers were mainly constructed if the defense of the opposing fortification could not be overcome by ladder assault, by sapping or by breaching walls or gates.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_towers

Siege Tower
Attackers sometimes built a siege tower to scale castle walls. Soldiers lay in wait inside the structure as others wheeled it to the castle. Once there, the soldiers lowered a drawbridge at the top of the tower onto the castle wall. Some towers were almost 100 feet high, and in the siege of Kenilworth Castle, fully 200 archers and 11 catapults were crowded into a single tower.

Siege towers were difficult and time-consuming to build, however, and castle defenders could burn them down with fire arrows or firepots (launched pots filled with flaming liquids such as tar). Sometimes castle knights launched surprise raids on a tower to destroy it during construction. To protect their siege engine, attackers draped it with rawhides of mules or oxen.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/trebuchet/tower.html