the archaeological work done at La Venta before progress and oil money
erased it. Carbon-dating suggested that the Olmecs had established
themselves here between 1500 and 1100 BC and had continued to occupy
the site—which consisted of an island lying in marshes to the east of the
Tonala river—until about 400 BC.9 Then construction was suddenly
abandoned, all existing buildings were ceremonially defaced or
demolished, and several huge stone heads and other smaller pieces of
sculpture were ritually buried in peculiar graves, just as had happened at
San Lorenzo. The La Venta graves were elaborate and carefully prepared,
lined with thousands of tiny blue tiles and filled up with layers of
multicoloured clay.10 At one spot some 15,000 cubic feet of earth had
been dug out of the ground to make a deep pit; its floor had been
carefully covered with serpentine blocks, and all the earth put back.
Three mosaic pavements were also found, intentionally buried beneath
several alternating layers of clay and adobe.11
La Venta’s principal pyramid stood at the southern end of the site.
Roughly circular at ground level, it took the form of a fluted cone, the
rounded sides consisting of ten vertical ridges with gullies between. The
pyramid was 100 feet tall, almost 200 feet in diameter and had an overall
8 The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, p. 30.
9 Ibid., p. 31.
10 The Prehistory of the Americas, pp. 268-9.
11 Ibid., p. 269.
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mass in the region of 300,000 cubic feet—an impressive monument by
any standards. The remainder of the site stretched for almost half a
kilometre along an axis that pointed precisely 8° west of north. Centred
on this axis, with every structure in flawless alignment, were several
smaller pyramids and plazas, platforms and mounds, covering a total
area of more than three square miles.
There was something detached and odd about La Venta, a sense that its
original function had not been properly understood. Archaeologists
referred to it as a ‘ceremonial centre’, and very probably that is what it
was. If one were honest, however, one would admit that it could also have
been several other things. The truth is that nothing is known about the
social organization, ceremonies and belief systems of the Olmecs. We do
not know what language they spoke, or what traditions they passed to
their children. We don’t even know what ethnic group they belonged to.
The exceptionally humid conditions of the Gulf of Mexico mean that not a
single Olmec skeleton has survived.12 In reality, despite the names we
have given them and the views we’ve formed about them, these people
are completely obscure to us.
It is even possible that the enigmatic sculptures ‘they’ left behind,
which we presume depicted them, were not ‘their’ work at all, but the
work of a far earlier and forgotten people. Not for the first time I found
myself wondering whether some of the great heads other remarkable
artefacts attributed to the Olmecs might not have been handed down like
heirlooms, perhaps over many millennia, to the cultures which eventually
began to build the mounds and pyramids at San Lorenzo and La Venta.
Reconstruction of La Venta. Note the unusual fluted-cone pyramid
that dominates the site.
If so, then who are we speaking of when we use the label ‘Olmec’? The
mound-builders? Or the powerful and imposing men with negroid
features who provided the models for the monolithic heads?
Fortunately some fifty pieces of ‘Olmec’ monumental sculpture,
including three of the giant heads, were rescued from La Venta by Carlos
Pellicer Camara, a local poet and historian who intervened forcefully when
12 The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, p. 28.
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he discovered that oil-drilling by the PEMEX company jeopardized the
ruins. By determined lobbying of the politicians of Tabasco (within which
La Venta lies), he arranged to have the significant finds moved to a park
on the outskirts of the regional capital Villahermosa.
Taken together these finds constitute a precious and irreplaceable
cultural record—or rather a whole library of cultural records—left behind
by a vanished civilization. But nobody knows how to read the language of
these records.
Above left: Profile view of the head of the Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt.
Above right: Profile view of Olmec Head from La Venta, Mexico. Below
left: Front view of the head of the Sphinx. Below right: Front view of
Olmec Head. Compare also opposite page, top left: Sphinx-like Olmec
sculpture from San Lorenzo, Mexico. Is it possible that the many
similarities between the cultures of pre-Columbian Central America
and Ancient Egypt could have stemmed from an as-yet-unidentified
‘third-party’ civilization that influenced both widely separated
regions at a remote and early date?
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Centre: Double-puma statue at Uxtnal, Mexico. Bottom: Double-lion
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symbolism from Ancient Egypt, depicting the Akeru, lion gods of
yesterday and today ( Akeru was written in hieroglyphs as
). The
religions of both regions share many other common images and
ideas. Also noteworthy is the fact that p’achi, the Central American
word for ‘human sacrifice’, means, literally ‘to open the mouth’—
which calls to mind a strange Ancient Egyptian funerary ritual known
as ‘the opening of the mouth’. Likewise it was believed in both
regions that the souls of dead kings were reborn as stars.
Deus ex machina
Villahermosa, Tabasco province
I was looking at an elaborate relief that had been dubbed ‘Man in
Serpent’ by the archaeologists who found it at La Venta. According to
expert opinion it showed ‘an Olmec, wearing a head-dress and holding an
incense bag, enveloped by a feathered serpent’.13
The relief was carved into a slab of solid granite measuring about four
feet wide by five feet high and showed a man sitting with his legs
stretched out in front of him as though he were reaching for pedals with
his feet. He held a small, bucket-shaped object in his right hand. With his
left he appeared to be raising or lowering a lever. The ‘head-dress’ he
wore was an odd and complicated garment. To my eye it seemed more
functional than ceremonial, although I could not imagine what its
function might have been. On it, or perhaps on a console above it, were
two x-shaped crosses.
I turned my attention to the other principal element of the sculpture,
13 The Cities of Ancient Mexico, p. 37.
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the ‘feathered serpent’. On one level it did, indeed, depict exactly that: a
plumed or feathered serpent, the age-old symbol of Quetzalcoatl, whom
the Olmecs, therefore, must have worshipped (or at the
very least
recognized). Scholars do not dispute this interpretation.14 It is generally
accepted that Quetzalcoatl’s cult was immensely ancient, originating in
prehistoric times in Central America and thereafter receiving the devotion
of many cultures during the historic period.
The feathered serpent in this particular sculpture, however, had certain
characteristics that set it apart. It seemed to be more than just a religious
symbol; indeed, there was something rigid and structured about it that
made it look almost like a piece of machinery.
Whispers of ancient secrets
Later that day I took shelter in the giant shadow cast by one of the Olmec
heads Carlos Pellicer Camara had rescued from La Venta. It was the head
of an old man with a broad flat nose and thick lips. The lips were slightly
parted, exposing strong, square teeth. The expression on the face
suggested an ancient, patient wisdom, and the eyes seemed to gaze
unafraid into eternity, like those of the Great Sphinx at Giza in lower
Egypt.
It would probably be impossible, I thought, for a sculptor to invent all
the different combined characteristics of an authentic racial type. The
portrayal of an authentic combination of racial characteristics therefore
implied strongly that a human model had been used.
I walked around the great head a couple of times. It was 22 feet in
circumference, weighed 19.8 tons, stood almost 8 feet high, had been
carved out of solid basalt, and displayed clearly ‘an authentic
combination of racial characteristics’. Indeed, like the other pieces I had
seen at Santiago Tuxtla and at Tres Zapotes, it unmistakably and
unambiguously showed a negro.
The reader can form his or her own opinion after examining the
relevant photographs in this book. My own view is that the Olmec heads
present us with physiologically accurate images of real individuals of
negroid stock—charismatic and powerful African men whose presence in
Central America 3000 years ago has not yet been explained by scholars.
Nor is there any certainty that the heads were actually carved in that
epoch. Carbon-dating of fragments of charcoal found in the same pits
tells us only the age of the charcoal. Calculating the true antiquity of the
heads themselves is a much more complex matter.
It was with such thoughts that I continued my slow walk among the
strange and wonderful monuments of La Venta. They whispered of
ancient secrets—the secret of the man in the machine ... the secret of the
14 The Prehistory of the Americas, p. 270.
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negro heads ... and, last but not least, the secret of a legend brought to
life. For it seemed that flesh might indeed have been put on the mythical
bones of Quetzalcoatl when I found that several of the La Venta
sculptures contained realistic likenesses not only of negroes but of tall,
thin-featured, long-nosed, apparently Caucasian men with straight hair
and full beards, wearing flowing robes ...
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Chapter 18
Conspicuous Strangers
Matthew Stirling, the American archaeologist who excavated La Venta in
the 1940s, made a number of spectacular discoveries there. The most
spectacular of all was the Stele of the Bearded Man.
The plan of the ancient Olmec site, as I have said, lay along an axis
pointing 8° west of north. At the southern end of this axis, 100 feet tall,
loomed the fluted cone of the great pyramid. Next to it, at ground level,
was what looked like a curb about a foot high enclosing a spacious
rectangular area one-quarter the size of an average city block. When the
archaeologists began to uncover this curb they found, to their surprise,
that it consisted of the upper parts of a wall of columns. Further
excavation through the undisturbed layers of stratification that had
accumulated revealed that the columns were ten feet tall. There were
more than 600 of them and they had been set together so closely that
they formed a near-impregnable stockade. Hewn out of solid basalt and
transported to La Venta from quarries more than sixty miles distant, the
columns weighed approximately two tons each.
Why all this trouble? What had the stockade been built to contain?
Even before excavation began, the tip of a massive chunk of rock had
been visible jutting out of the ground in the centre of the enclosed area,
about four feet higher than the illusory ‘curb’ and leaning steeply
forward. It was covered with carvings. These extended down, out of sight,
beneath the layers of soil that filled the ancient stockade to a height of
about nine feet.
Stirling and his team worked for two days to free the great rock. When
exposed it proved to be an imposing stele fourteen feet high, seven feet
wide and almost three feet thick. The carvings showed an encounter
between two tall men, both dressed in elaborate robes and wearing
elegant shoes with turned-up toes. Either erosion or deliberate mutilation
(quite commonly practised on Olmec monuments) had resulted in the
complete defacement of one of the figures. The other was intact. It so
obviously depicted a Caucasian male with a high-bridged nose and a
it ‘Uncle Sam’.1
I walked slowly around the twenty-ton stele, remembering as I did so
that it had lain buried in the earth for more than 3000 years. Only in the
brief half century or so since Stirling’s excavations had it seen the light of
day again. What would its fate be now? Would it stand here for another
1 Fair Gods and Stone Faces, p. 144.
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thirty centuries as an object of awe and splendour for future generations
to gawp at and revere? Or, in such a great expanse of time, was it
possible that circumstances might change so much that it would once
again be buried and concealed?
Perhaps neither would happen. I remembered the ancient calendrical
system of Central America, which the Olmecs had initiated. According to
them, and to their more famous successors the Mayas, there just weren’t
any great expanses of time left, let alone three millennia. The Fifth Sun
was all used up and a tremendous earthquake was building to destroy
humanity two days before Christmas in AD 2012.
I turned my attention back to the stele. Two things seemed to be clear:
the encounter scene it portrayed must, for some reason, have been of
immense importance to the Olmecs, hence the grandeur of the stele
itself, and the construction of the remarkable stockade of columns built
to contain it. And, as was the case with the negro heads, it was obvious
that the face of the bearded Caucasian man could only have been
sculpted from a human model. The racial verisimilitude was too good for
an artist to have invented it.
The same went for two other Caucasian figures I was able to identify
among the surviving monuments from La Venta
. One was carved in low
relief on a heavy and roughly circular slab of stone about three feet in
diameter. Dressed in what looked like tight-fitting leggings, his features
were those of an Anglo-Saxon. He had a full pointed beard and wore a
curious floppy cap on his head. In his left hand he extended a flag, or
perhaps a weapon of some kind. His right hand, which he held across the
middle of his chest, appeared to be empty. Around his slim waist was tied
a flamboyant sash. The other Caucasian figure, this time carved on the
side of a narrow pillar, was similarly bearded and attired.
Who were these conspicuous strangers? What were they doing in
Central America? When did they come? And what relationship did they
have with those other strangers who had settled in this steamy rubber
jungle—the ones who had provided the models for the great negro
heads?
Some radical researchers, who rejected the dogma concerning the
isolation of the New World prior to 1492, had proposed what looked like
a viable solution to the problem: the bearded, thin-featured individuals
could have been Phoenicians from the Mediterranean who had sailed
through the Pillars of Hercules and across the Atlantic Ocean as early as
the second millennium BC. Advocates of this theory went on to suggest
that the negroes shown at the same sites were the ‘slaves’ of the
Phoenicians, picked up on the coast of West Africa prior to the transAtlantic run.2
The more consideration I gave to the strange character of the La Venta
sculptures, the more dissatisfied I became with these ideas. Probably the
2 Ibid., p. 141-42.
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Phoenicians and other Old World peoples had crossed the Atlantic ages
before Columbus. There was compelling evidence for that, although it is
outside the scope of this book.3 The problem was that the Phoenicians,
who had left unmistakable examples of their distinctive handiwork in
many parts of the ancient world,4 had not done so at the Olmec sites in
Central America. Neither the negro heads, nor the reliefs portraying
bearded Caucasian men showed any signs of anything remotely
Phoenician in their style, handiwork or character.5 Indeed, from a stylistic
point of view, these powerful works of art seemed to belong to no known