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THE MYSTERY OF THE OLMEC CIVILISATION THE MYSTERY THE OLMEC CIVILISATION The Olmecs, who pre-dated the Maya, left behind artifacts featuring images of Africans, Orientals and Europeans, suggestive of wide-ranging contact between many cultures via transoceanic travel. We can trace the progress of man in Mexico without noting any definite Old World influence during this period (1000-650 BC) except a strong Negroid substratum connected with the Magicians (High Priests). — Frederick Peterson, Ancient Mexico (1959) The discovery of the Olmecs he oldest and probably greatest mystery of early Mexico, and Central America in general, is that of the Olmecs. Academic archaeologists now often refer to the Olmecs as proto-Mayans or Olmans, meaning inhabitants of Olman, the "Olmec land" as it is now being called. When one looks at the enigmatic cave drawings and the gigantic, perfectly carved heads with their the trademark "frown" and militaristic look, an emphatic question leaps to the forebrain: "Who were these weirdos?" The strange world of the Olmecs is only now being pieced together. In their art, Olmecs are often dressed in leather helmets, have a broad face with thick lips and a broad nose, have a mean-looking expression and could easily be likened to a bunch of angry African Rugby players, maybe from Nigeria or Tanzania. While mainstream archaeologists assure us that Africans never colonised Mexico or Central America, the layperson looks at these statues and heads and wonders how academia can make such a blatantly wrong assertion, one that is startlingly unscientific at its very core. Even though it is sanctioned by the hallowed halls of academia to tell the masses of tourists and students alike that these were not Africans, one must conclude that these academics are blind or insane—or both! What is fascinating about this enigmatic civilisation to us modern viewers is how the Olmecs represented themselves. In addition to some sculptures showing Negroid features, many artifacts depict individuals with Oriental or European features. It is therefore very interesting to pay close attention to how the figures are presented—their dress and head gear, the shape of their eyes, nose, ears and mouth, the way they held their hands and the expressions on their faces. It is all wonderful art at its finest. Their expressions, and also the symbolism in the objects they hold or are associated with, seem to indicate a high level of sophistication and a shared iconography. What does it all mean? Who were these people? Were they isolated villagers or strangers from a faraway land? Until the 1930s, it was largely held that the oldest civilisation in the Americas was that of the Maya. The great quantity of Mayan monuments, stelae, pottery, statues and other artifacts discovered throughout the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala and the Gulf Coast of Mexico had convinced archaeologists that the Maya was the mother civilisation of Central America. But some "Mayan artifacts" were different from the main bulk of the artifacts in subtle ways. One difference was that some carvings of large heads have faces with more African-looking features than many of the other Mayan works. Mayan paintings and sculpture can be quite varied, but the African-looking features seemed distinctly un-Mayan. These African-looking heads often have a curious frown and wear masks or appear to be a half-jaguar/half-man beast. This recurring motif did not fit in with other Mayan finds. In 1929, Marshall H. Saville, director of the Museum of the American Indian in New York, classified these works as being from an entirely new culture that was not of Mayan heritage. Somewhat inappropriately, he called this culture "Olmec" (a name first assigned to it in 1927), which means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica (Aztec) people. Most of the early anomalous artifacts were found in the Tabasco and Veracruz areas of southern Mexico, a swampy region now exploited for natural gas and by David Hatcher Childress © 2007 Adventures Unlimited PO Box 74 Kempton, Illinois 60946-0074, USA Email: auphq@frontiernet.net Websites: http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com http://wexclub.com by David Hatcher Childress © 2007 NEXUS = 57 DECEMBER 2007 — JANUARY 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com