Black History Series
THE OLMEC PROBLEM
Revised May 10, 2003
The world has seen evidence of the Olmec culture for nearly a century and a half, but has been slow to acknowledge it. The paper that follows will help you to understand the reluctance.
The Discovery
On the western slopes of the Sierra of San Martin in the region of San Andres Tuxtla, a town of the state of Veracruz in Mexico, a laborer on a sugar-cane hacienda, while clearing the forest for his field, discovered on the surface of the ground what looked like the bottom of a great iron kettle turned upside down. He reported his discovery to the owner of the hacienda, who ordered it excavated. In place of the kettle was found a colossal stone head. "It was left in the excavation," reports J. M. Meglar, "as one would not think to move it, being of granite and measuring two yards in height with corresponding proportions."[1]
Meglar visited the hacienda in 1862, a few years after the excavation, to see this head for himself. Seven years after Meglar’s visit, in 1869, a brief notice from him describing the discovery was published in the bulletin of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. "On my arrival at the hacienda," Meglar reports, "I asked the owner to take me to look at it, and I was struck with surprise: as a work of art, it is without exaggeration a magnificent sculpture ... but what astonished me was the Ethiopic type represented. I reflected that there had undoubtedly been Negroes in this country, and that this had been in the first epoch of the world." J. M. Meglar would be noted as the first person to publish evidence of the Olmec Civilization, now accepted as the mother civilization of Mesoamerica.
I reflected that there had undoubtedly been Negroes in this country, and that this had been in the first epoch of the world
The presence of a gigantic Negroid head in the Americas invoked little in the way of academic curiosity from 19th century American archaeologists. The first archaeologists to visit the site appeared in 1905, some 35 years after the head was unearthed, and he traveled to the site from Europe. Others had dismissed the discovery, perhaps, as being some kind of regional peculiarity. The German archaeologist Eduard Seler, a respected student of ancient America, and his wife inspected the Olmec head and suggested instead that it might be the product of a more universal culture.[2]
After another two decades, in February of 1925, Frans Blom and anthropologist Oliver La Farge traveled to Mexico. They confirmed among other things that the colossal head was still there, then they went on to discover the greatest Olmec archaeological site of all, La Venta, with its collection of great stone sculptures.[3] Among these sculptures was another colossal stone head quite similar to the one that had been found in Tres Zapotes. The discoveries made by Blom and La Farge gave rise to the suspicion that there was something major to be discovered in the State of Veracruz in Mexico. Still another decade later, though little had been done in the interim, the respected Yale archaeologist Michael Coe reports that “by about 1938 there was strongly grounded suspicions that an entirely new civilization, somehow related to the Maya but different from it, and of an unknown age, was to be discovered in the jungle strongholds of the southern Gulf Coast plain."[4]
The landmark discovery was actually made by Matthew W. Stirling in 1938,[5] nearly eighty years after the civilization was first hinted at. Stirling found that, in addition to the Olmec sites at Tres Zapotes and La Venta, there was a third great site at San Lorenzo, a site that would be later be excavated by Michael Coe from 1966 to 1968. Nine more Colossal Heads would be found at San Lorenzo.
The unearthing of Olmec civilization was a full century in the coming, and many archaeological sites still remain buried in the jungles of Central America. Some find it odd in retrospect that it should have taken so long. "One would think," said Michael Coe, "that the presence of a colossal stone head ... measuring over six feet high would have attracted further notice to the archaeological resources of the southern Gulf Coast. Instead, there was only silence…. "[6]
Nigel Davies expressed similar sentiments: "The discovery of this pioneer civilization was no sudden or sensational triumph of archaeology," he said. "On the contrary, after the first traces of the Olmec came to light, a long time was to pass before anyone had an inkling of their significance. This is all the more surprising since the first relic to be found was no mere pottery fragment but a colossal stone head, weighing about 20 tonnes."[7]
The Problem
Coe, Davies, and other Western archaeologists, when addressing this culture, sometimes refer to the "Olmec Problem"[8] as if there were something deeply disturbing about their findings. Let us examine some of the surprises found in Olmec culture and perhaps we can see where this problem lies. The first and most difficult matter to explain is that the Olmec culture appears to have been fully evolved even in its most ancient stage. Coe points out that the Olmec culture did not develop gradually as one might expect of a sophisticated civilization[9]. It defies the paradigm wherein progress comes slowly in "a line of development gently sloping ever upward. For that reason," Coe explains, "probably few archaeologists have been prepared for the disturbance which the discovery of the Olmec has played with that neat curve: a Classic civilization right at the very start of the formative!" Nothing of a transitional period of development preceding the Olmec has been found anywhere in Mexico or elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Before the Olmec, there were simply tribes. But, as Davies points out, the "art and architecture of the Olmec heartland were clearly the product not of tribes but of kingdoms."[10]
The Olmec culture was obviously imported into Central America from some existing civilization
The Olmec culture was obviously imported into Central America from some existing civilization. Additional evidence of their foreign origin comes from the fact that many of the raw materials prized by the Olmec elite are imported, some from still unknown sources. "Everything at La Venta is exotic," reports Coe "in the sense that it was brought from somewhere else. Even the brightly colored clays had been specially selected and brought to the island, for they are not indigenous. Likewise, the jade and serpentine (ton after ton of the latter) came from a distant and as yet unknown source."[11] Obsidian, a key material that the Olmec used expertly, was imported, perhaps from Guatemala and from the Valley of Mexico.[12] Coe compared the role of obsidian in Mesoamerica to the role of steel in western civilization.[13] He reports that tons of this volcanic glass were brought into San Lorenzo from a variety of sources. "Another much-prized and imported substance," says Coe, "was iron ore capable of taking a high polish, for this was turned into parabolic concave mirrors which must have played a great ritual role."[14]
"The greatest wonder," states Coe, "is that most of the volcanic basalt used in their monuments can only have come from the Tuxtla mountains, sixty miles due west of La Venta." All of the colossal head were carved from basalt (not granite as Meglar supposed) and the Olmec heartland is singularly deficient in this volcanic rock.
The colossal stone heads of the Olmec have been found in only one region of the world, in the coastal region of southern Veracruz in Mexico.[15] Davies states that "a fairly broad consensus now maintains that their heartland or home territory lay in the rubber land of southern Veracruz and Tabasco."[16] This region, according to Davies, is also "the only place where Olmec civilization appears in its entirety. "[17] The gigantic heads are intimately connected with Olmec culture.
It was not until the middle of the 20th century that the Olmec problem came to a head, after radiocarbon dates established the San Lorenzo culture as having flourished from 1200 to 900 BC. As a point of reference, Moses is believed to have led the children of Israel out of Egypt at about that time (1200 BC). San Lorenzo is the oldest of the Olmec sites, but if it is taken as being the proto-Olmec phase, it remains an enigma because "it presents a fully developed culture" and "the cult of the Jaguar appears as a fully-fledged religion."[18]
The Olmec problem also derives in part from the Negroid appearance of these heads. Davies describes them as follows:
The colossal heads are confined solely to the heartland and a total of sixteen are known, of which four come from La Venta and nine from San Lorenzo. They range from 1.6 to 3 metres in height and are all carved from blocks of basalt rock. Their features are very alike, and only the expression differs; one even smiles, though most have a more solemn aspect; all wear the helmet-like headdress, though the design of each varies slightly.[19]
The problem continues with the fact that the colossal heads are certain to be sculptures of the rulers of the Olmec culture. It is likely that these heads were created to record the source of Olmec culture.
The Refutations
Meglar was the first to speculate that the heads represent African voyagers. Michael Coe calls this wild speculation. "So struck was Meglar by his theory of Negro voyages from Africa to Mexico that he took up his pen again in 1871 for further wild speculations, quite in line with the migrationist theories of his time."[20] Davies also refers to this theory as speculation. "It is therefore not surprising that their so-called Negroid features led to speculation as to the antecedents of people whose traits seemed untypical of the American Indians, and revived Meglar's speculation on African migrants."[21]
American archaeologists (Caucasian) are certain of two things: that the Olmec homeland lay somewhere outside of Veracruz, and that the homeland could not conceivably have been in Africa. "We do not know where the Olmec homeland lay," said Michael Coe. "Wherever it was, they already knew how to move and carve huge basalt boulders."[22]
Unlikely Theories
Where, then, could these people, Negroid in appearance, have come from 1200 years before Christ? Several theories have been proposed by those who reject their African origin. Michael Coe suggests that the homeland of the Olmec was in the Tuxtla range, the mountainous region where they obtained the basalt to carve the colossal heads; no physical evidence has been found there, however, to indicate the presence of an advanced society. None of the magnificent carvings have been found there, still Coe persists:
The Tuxtla Mountains would be the logical place: so, on moving to La Venta, they took "a little bit of home" with them, to remind them of their volcano-surrounded origin point. A search for very ancient Olmec sites could and should be made in the Tuxtlas, but we may never find them. The same volcanoes were spewing cinders and lava until the eighteenth century, and the evidence may well lie buried a hundred feet deep, never to be uncovered.[23]
Nigel Davies offers several suggestions about how the colossal heads should be interpreted. One is that they may not represent an actual race of people but an art style: "Following the discovery of Olmec remains all over Mexico, on the Pacific as well as the Caribbean side and also in the Central Plateau, some argued that they were a specific tribe, while others viewed them less as a people than an art style, based on a common cult, and adopted in various regions."[24]
Davies also suggests that the heads are intended to be feline when he says "Olmec works of art range from such tiny jade figurines to the huge stone heads found only in the coastal region of southern Veracruz. While these heads have no truly feline traits, thick lips and stub noses are common both to them and to the smaller figures. It is therefore not surprising that their so-called Negroid features led to speculation as to the antecedents of people whose traits seemed untypical of the American Indians...."[25]
Davies then advances as a "more logical explanation" that the ancestors of the Olmec came into the Americas across the Bering land bridge. This means that the migration would have occurred during the last Ice Age around 25,000 BC before the icy passage melted. The Olmecs would then have had to cross southward through Alaska and the whole of North America leaving no evidence of their presence anywhere on the continent, travel the extent of Mexico to southern Veracruz, then wait some 20,000 years to develop the advanced Olmec culture found there in 1200 BC. In the words of Davies himself:
In so far as Negroid features are depicted in pre-Colombian art, a more logical explanation surely exists that does not depend upon flights of fancy involving African seafarers. Negroid peoples of many kinds are to be found in Asia as well as Africa, and there is no reason why at least a few of them should not have joined those migrant bands who came across the Bering land bridge that joined north-east Asia and north-west America for so many millennia.
Small men with Negroid features were the aboriginal inhabitants of many lands facing the Indian Ocean, including India itself, the Malay Peninsula and also the Philippines, where they still exist today. One need go no further than Manila International Airport to find proof of their existence. ... It is therefore not in the least surprising that such elements should have joined the ranks of those early migrants who crossed the Bering bridge before it sank beneath the waves; their presence offers a more logical explanation of Negroid features than any other.[26]
Davies then goes on to say that it is uncertain that the colossal heads represent a Negroid race. "Even if one accepts the uncertain premise that Olmec art is based on the portrayal of true Negroids, this does not warrant the conclusion that such people were Africans.[27] Davies then falls prey to a cross-cultural fallacy when he suggests that the heads all look alike. "The features of the colossal heads are so stereotyped that it is to be doubted that they are stone portraits of individual rulers; they seem more likely to be a series of representations of the same divinized being, perhaps regarded as a universal ancestor or cultural hero, who invented the different arts and skills."[28] Coe, while admitting that the heads do indeed represent Olmec rulers, went on to suggest that the race represented by these portraits might come from Asia. "It is virtually certain that these heads are portraits of Olmec rulers; their faces, with thickened, everted lip and flat noses, are reminiscent of the physiognomies to be seen in some southeastern Asiatic populations, but each is distinctive, as is the emblematic device on their protective helmets."[29]
One must actually look at the images presented by the Olmec heads when evaluating the theories advanced by Coe and Davies. Both of them are willing to believe that these heads do not represent members of the Negroid race, and that if they appear to be Negroid, then they are certainly not African in origin. It seems reasonable to Coe and Davies that the people represented in these sculptures might indeed be Asians and Davies advances that as a much more logical explanation of their Negroid appearance. What they seem to be saying is that the Olmec civilization was simply too advanced to have come out of the dark continent of Africa. In reality, such a prospect is not at all farfetched.
Contemporary Events in Nubia
Let us consider the state of affairs in Africa at the time the Olmecs arrrived in the Americas. We know that large sailing vessels navigated the Nile as far back as 3000 BC. Khufu’s barge dates back to 2600 BC. It was 135 feet long, weighed 35 tons, had ten oars, and had an enclosed cabin—all this, some 1400 years before the Olmec civilization arose in Mexico. As for the skills required to navigate the Atlantic, none would have been needed. A bottle dropped into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, when pulled into the south equitorial current, would be swept into the Americas without a pilot or navigator. Why then does Davies call it a “flight of fancy” to suppose that Africans could have crossed the Atlantic in 1200 BC. They had the vessels, they had the currents, and as we shall now see, they had the engineering skills to build the kind of culture built by the Olmecs.
A bottle dropped into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, when pulled into the south equitorial current, would be swept into the Americas without a pilot or navigator
When we examine contemporary events in Nubia along the southern Nile Valley, we find that much of the technology found in the Olmec heartland had been known in the Nile Valley centuries earlier. During the period leading up to the Olmec presence in Mexico, a Negroid culture in Nubia was growing in power. Around 1700 BC, Egypt was smothered as Nubia expanded its power toward the north and as the Hyksos in the north pushed the seat of Egyptian power southward to Thebes. The Nubian group in question is the Kerma culture south of the Third Cataract in a fertile bend of the Nile. "The Kerma kingdom became one of the most powerful states in the history of Nubia. The wealth of the Kerma kingdom is reflected in the extravagant huge mounds of tomb chambers; at the center of the mounds, the kings' bodies, unmummified, were placed on gold-covered beds, surrounded by treasures of gold, ivory, and jewelry."[30]
much of the technology found in the Olmec heartland had been known in the Nile Valley centuries earlier
Nubia controlled southern Egypt from 1700 BC to 1500 BC. During that time, the technology of Egypt and the technology of Nubia were one and the same. "By 1600 BC, the Kerma people, together with the Hyksos, controlled most of southern and northern Egypt, with the Egyptian kings ruling only a small district centered at Thebes. The Egyptian kings from Thebes fought the Hyksos about 1550 BC and forced them out of northern Egypt. Then they turned their armies south and began a war against Nubia which lasted about fifty years. Once they destroyed Kerma, the capital city of Kush, then the rest of the kingdom fell, and the Egyptians gained control over all of Nubia as far south as the fourth Cataract."[31]
Nile Valley Similarities
With this insight, we can examine the Olmec heartland more closely to find similarities between life in the Olmec culture with that along the Nile. The first similarity is brought out in a book co-authored by Michael Coe himself:
Perhaps the most significant factor in the Olmec landscape is the extensive flooding which takes place during the rainy season, when water from the swollen rivers covers all low-lying places; as the water recedes, a layer of rich mud remains along the natural river levees. These levees are the most productive land in Mexico, and it is probably this Nile-like situation, combined with rapidly increasing population, that gave rise to the complex culture of the Olmec.[32]
The Nile Valley is famed for its pyramids, palaces, and plazas, usually designed around a central, north-south axis. Davies could be describing an African archaeological site when he says:
... towards the end of the second millennium B. C., an epoch-making step was taken; from the midst of those rustic hamlets arose the first ceremonial centres, adorned with pyramids and palaces, built round plazas tiled with mosaics. Where petty chiefs had claimed obedience, kings now held sway, attended by richly clad warriors and courtiers; fine sculpture and painting took the place of cottage crafts; instead of mere shamanism, elaborate rituals called forth a hierarchy of priests, who became middle America's first intelligentsia; they recorded the motion of the stars, studied the mysteries of time and space, gaining an esoteric knowledge that raised them above their fellow men.[33]
Also to be seen in Southern Veracruz are the rich burial offerings such as are seen in tombs along the Nile. Davies describes similar Olmec tombs:
Another salient feature is the huge effort lavished upon works of art that were simply buried in the massive pits, of which five have been located. Archaeologists often refer to these as burial offerings ... the treasures are often arranged as if they might have formed part of a tomb. The rich contents of these pits were never intended to be seen and admired by human eye, since they were immediately interred; and yet for sheer quality of workmanship they are unique in Mexico.[34]
Coe describes such practices during the La Venta period:
La Venta's greatest wealth and power were reached during its two final building phases. According to the most recent radiocarbon dates, this would have been after 800 BC, but before its final abandonment, perhaps around 400 BC. To this stage in the history of La Venta belong some of the finest offerings and burials ever found in the New World. Many of these are either placed exactly on the center line running through the site, on in relation to it, and the offerings themselves are often laid out so that their own long axis conforms with this center line orientation.[35]
"People of rank were sometimes buried under platforms or in artificial mounds. The most remarkable of these was Tomb A of La Venta, a funerary mound for an important person."[36]
Coe compares the Olmec tombs with those in Egypt:
Burials have been mentioned. These might better be called "tombs," for they rival in richness some of the famous tombs of Old World archaeology.[37].... the extremely acid soil of La Venta over the centuries has eaten away all traces of skeletons; nothing is left but the most imperishable of the loot buried with the dead Olmec lord.[38]
Feline deities are found in Olmec lore as well as in that of the Nile. The half-man, half-lion sphinx is found at Giza and across the Nile, just as the half-man, half-jaguar is found throughout Olmec culture. The practice carries over into modern times as well; we find the lion often featured in the coats of arms in Europe as a symbol of power. "The jaguar," Davies points out, "was the undisputed king of the jungle. As we have seen, throughout the Americas the large feline remains a natural choice as tribal symbol, and is still sometimes thought of as a child."
In both the Nile and Olmec cultures, we find stratified societies in which the rulers controlled the surplus of labor. "The Olmec obviously believed in the principle of conspicuous waste when it came to expending labor and materials."[39] Davies describes one ceremonial center as being massive. "On a line running from north to south, the ceremonial centre is over one kilometre long; it has no great pyramid like that of La Venta but contains several hundred earth mounds."[40]
"The Olmec example of a society ruled by an elite class devoted to the worship of gods and ancestors"[41] looks very much like civilizations along the Nile. There are in fact too many similarities between Olmec and Nile culture for them have been coincidental. Pyramids appear in only two places in the ancient world -- Mesoamerica and the Nile Valley. Great public works projects are found on every continent, but not on the scale seen on the Nile and in Mesoamerica, not in that era, and not with such massive use of manpower and material.
Davies attributes the Olmec with the invention of ceremonial architecture, monumental sculpture, mural painting and glyphic writing,[42] but these inventions were all to be found along the Nile centuries before the Olmec rose to prominence.
Olmec Thechnology
Another part of the "Olmec Problem" lies in the sophistication of their technology. If one accepts the assertion that the continent of Africa has made no contribution to civilized life and if one can somehow surgically remove Egypt from Africa, then Olmec technology combined with the Negroid features of its leaders becomes difficult to explain. When we look more closely at Olmec achievements, the difficulties are intensified.
The Olmec engineers, for example, knew how to move huge boulders weighing 20 to 40 tons over significant distances. Coe describes the difficulties:
How did they ever get the stones to La Venta from the Tuxtlas? The engineering problems involved would be formidable even today. Certainly part of the journey could have been on enormous rafts, floated down the westernmost feeder streams of the Coatzacoalcos river, then along the coast, east to the mouth of the Tonal. But they would have had to have been dragged at least twenty-five miles overland to reach navigable waters within the Coatzacoalcos drainage. Remember that the Colossal heads, for instance, weigh an average of eighteen tons each. The problem was indeed formidable.[43]
Davies explains further:
The basalt used for making the colossal heads and the monuments came from the south-eastern slopes of the Tuxtla Mountains, ninety kilometres west of La Venta as the crow flies. The heads weighed up to twenty tonnes and Stela 3 as much as 25 tonnes; therefore to bring the basalt blocks to La Venta was a prodigious undertaking. They first had to be dragged forty kilometers overland to the nearest navigable water; from there they could have been floated down to the sea at Coatzacoalcos on giant rafts, conveyed along a coast often lashed by heavy surf, and finally up the river Tonal to their destination.[44]
"Among the most remarkable achievements of the people of San Lorenzo," according to Davies, "was the construction of quite an elaborate drainage system, the first form of water control known in the New World. Part of this system was built into a ridge and, when rediscovered, water still gushed forth during heavy rain. The drains were made of U-shaped stones, placed end-to-end and buried in a trench. The principal line of drainage runs from east to west and is fed by three subsidiary lines. The sophisticated design of the joints between the branch and main drains bears witness to the skill of Olmec engineers."[45]
As a final example of the sophistication of Olmec technology, there are the parabolizing mirrors found by Coe:
Lastly, on top of the clays that covered the mask of the Southeast Platform, the Olmec laid down an offering of twenty jade and serpentine celts (small stone axes) arranged as a kind of cross, with a concave mirror of hematite placed in the vertical bar of the "cross."
We shall come upon these concave mirrors again, for a number of them have been found at La Venta in offerings of slightly later date. These were made of some iron-rich ore that takes a high polish, such as hematite, ilmenite, or magnetite. The reflecting surfaces are concave, and it has been found that they had been ground, by a totally unknown process, to optical specifications, being just slightly parabolizing in curvature (the radius of curvature grows progressively greater as the edge is approached).... Experiments show that one can throw images of the outside world on a blank surface with them, and it is also sure that they can be used to start fires on a hot day.[46]
Recognition of Olmec Primacy
The Olmec civilization is now recognized as "one of the four all-embracing civilizations of Mexico."[47] Even Michael Coe agrees with this assessment:
There is now no dispute over the primacy of the Olmec civilization of the "heartland": this was Mesoamerica's first complex society. Olmec objects and influence are found all the way from central Mexico down to Costa Rica. Whether by emulation or conquest or trade, or missionary enterprise (or combinations of any or all of these), the Olmec example of a society ruled by an elite class devoted to the worship of gods and ancestors became the rule in many areas outside the heartland. Some of these regions, such as the Valley of Oaxaca, seem almost to have been autochthonous developments, while others, such as the early Maya, seem to have been direct descendants of the Olmec.[48]
Archaeological Preservation
Davies describes the Olmec heartland as being "an area of about 18,000 square kilometres on the shores of the Caribbean, bounded by the River Papaloapan on the west and by the River Tonal on the east side. This is a well-defined zone, suitable for human habitation, bordered on the west by land that is mainly inundated, while to its east are the great waterlogged marshes of Tabasco."[49]
The major Olmec archaeological sites have been found in San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. San Lorenzo is the oldest site. It lies near the center of the heartland at the foothills of the Tuxtla range. It was first located by Stirling in 1945 and was excavated by Michael Coe in 1955-1968. It was here that began what Davies calls "a vastly superior civilization."[50] The second oldest site, and the most impressive of the three, is La Venta. Construction at La Venta began in 1100 BC.[51] The forest was laboriously cleared, a massive ridge was built, and the first American pyramid was erected.[52] La Venta lies at the eastern extremity of the heartland. At the western extremity lies Tres Zapotes. It dates from 500 BC to 100 BC and belongs to the third, or late, phase of Olmec civilization. "Tres Zapotes unquestionably ranks among the major Olmec sites," says Davies, "but information is rather fragmentary, owing to the lack of detail exploration since Stirling's first digging in 1938 and 1939."[53] The homeland, according to Davies, "contains a whole series of Olmec remains, most of which have hardly been touched."[54]
The Olmec story has not completely unfolded. Much of their culture still remains buried in the jungles of Central America. There was no great urgency in the archaeological surveys thus far conducted and there seems to be no great urgency to complete the task. Regrettably, there is also little interest in preserving the main archaeological sites. Coe described La Venta as "the most magnificent Olmec site ever dug, for it is the key to Olmec culture.”[55] Nigel Davies tells the sad tale of La Venta as it exists today:
Much has changed since Stirling's first trip to La Venta in 1940. It was then a remote and swampy island, to be reached only after an arduous journey by river launch and on muleback. Now, however, it has been the victim of modern progress; an airstrip bisects the site of Mexico's earliest temples; where her first astronomers watched the stars, oil flares light up the sky. In Stirling's day jaguars, deified by the Olmecs, still roamed the island and during his first stay a large one killed three hogs only 200 yards from the house in which he was living.
La Venta itself, therefore, has little to offer the tourist today. However, he can see some of its greatest works of art exhibited in the La Venta Park at Villahermosa, capital of the state of Tabasco. A number of other Olmec statues were taken to the Archaeological Museum of Jalapa, mainly from San Lorenzo.
Only a small proportion of the ruins were ever excavated before they were bulldozed by modern developers.[56]
Coe gives the rest of the sad tale:
The oil camp of La Venta has now turned into a sizable and very ugly town: one of the most sordid red-light districts in Mexico lies at the very foot of the Great Pyramid, and the entire surface of this mighty construction has been completely cleared as a kind of park for the edification of the townsfolk and the ladies of easy virtue in the area.[57]
The story is the same at Tres Zapotes: "Tres Zapotes is large; it contains over fifty mounds, grouped in regular patterns. ... Like La Venta, Tres Zapotes has nothing to offer the visitor, who will find there little more than a cornfield. Olmec remains in general are more to be sought in museums than on the original sites."
At San Lorenzo there is little to see as well. Davies describes this site as follows:
San Lorenzo's architecture is uninspiring, since it can boast of no pyramids, plazas or colonnades. In addition, it has yielded relatively few of those remarkable smaller jade figures found in such profusion in La Venta and in many other parts of Mexico. If such objects ever existed, as they probably did, they have disappeared. The site is outstanding for its larger stone statues. In addition to nine colossal heads found there, its most spectacular works of are the great carvings often rather confusingly called 'monuments'.[58]
Conclusion
So what conclusions can be made about the Olmec civilization. Michael Coe, a respected archaeologist at Yale University, would have us to believe that these colossal heads are portraits of Asians and not Africans. The heads themselves are the best evidence as to the origins of the Olmecs. Anyone who has seen photographs of the colossal stone heads of the Olmecs is as capable as any one else of deciding what and who they are.
NOTES:
1 Quoted in Coe, Michael D., America's First Civilization, E. M. Hale and Co., Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 1968, p. 39.
2 Davies, Nigel, The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1982, p. 22
3 Coe, op cit, p. 40.
4 ibid, p. 43.
5 Davies, p 34.
6 Coe, op cit, p.40.
7 Davies, op cit., p. 22.
8 For example, see Coe, op cit., p. 67.
9 ibid, p. 23.
10 Davies, op cit., p. 36.
11 Coe, op cit., p. 67.
12 Davies, op cit., p. 60.
13 Coe, Michael; Snow, Dean; and Benson, Elizabeth, The Cultural Atlas of the World Ancient America, Stonehenge Press, Alexandria, VA, 1987, p. 100.
14 ibid.
15 Davies, op cit., p. 26.
16 ibid, p. 28.
17 ibid.
18 ibid., p. 55.
19 ibid, p. 42.
20 Coe, op cit., p. 39
21 Davies, op cit., p. 26.
22 ibid.
23 Coe, op cit., p. 70.
24 Davies, op cit., p. 25.
25 ibid, p. 26.
26 ibid.
27 ibid., p. 28.
28 ibid., p 37.
29 Coe, Snow, and Benson, op cit, p. 100.
30 ibid, p. 22.
31 ibid.
32 Coe, Snow, and Benson, op cit., p. 94.
33 Davies, op cit., p. 21.
34 ibid., p. 32.
35 Coe, op cit., p. 63.
36 Davies, op cit., p. 32.
37 Note the use of the euphemism “Old World” for these Nile Valley tombs.
38 Coe, op cit., p. 66.
39 ibid., p. 61.
40 Davies, op cit., p. 34.
41 Coe, Snow, and Benson, op cit., p. 102.
42 Davies, op cit., p. 63.
43 Coe, op cit., p. 67.
44 Davies, op cit., p 37.
45 ibid, p. 36.
46 Coe, op cit., p. 63.
47 Davies, op cit., p. 51.
48 Coe, Snow, and Benson, op cit., p. 102.
49 Davies, op cit., p. 30.
50 ibid, p34.
51 ibid., p31.
52 Coe, op cit., p11.
53 Davies, op cit., p. 33.
54 ibid., p. 30.
55 Coe, op cit., p. 50.
56 Davies, op cit., p. 30.
57 Coe, op cit., p. 70.
58 Davies, op cit., p. 35.