53. Relatives in South America

54. Possible Relatives in the Americas

Olmec civilization (Vera Cruz and Tabasco, Mexico)

by George Weber

Table of Contents

1. Why include the Olmecs here - and who were they?

2. Olmec archaeology in place of the missing history

3.Olmec sculptures

4. Ceremonial and buried art

5. Olmec language and writing

6. The Olmec-Mayan calendar - Wonders of an early civilization

The Olmec core area between 5000 and 1900 years ago, with selected major sites:

1 Tres Zapotes
Major Olmec ceremonial and adiministrative centre
In strategic position for northern trade and conquest

2 Laguno de los Cerros
Major Olmec ceremonial and adiministrative centre
Near sources of basalt needed for monuments

3 San Lorenzo
Major Olmec ceremonial and adiministrative centre
Controlled flood plains of modern Coatzacoalcos basin and river trade routes

4 Potrero Nuevo
Olmec ceremonial site

5 La Venta
Major Olmec ceremonial and adiministrative centre
Controlled rich estuaries and sources of cacao, rubber and salt

The exetent of Olmec cultural influence until the end of Olmec civilization a little less than 2,000 years ago.

After the Olmec civilisation vanished, its influence nevertheless spread indirectly over most of Meso-America through other civilizations (Maya, Zapotecs, etc). Some indirect Olmec influence may well have reached the earliest South American civilizations.

1. Why we include the Olmecs here - and who were they?

You may well ask. There is no denying that the Olmecs are rather outside our stated time frame for this web-site of "not later than 9,000 years ago", i.e. at the definitive end of the ice age. So then, why include them ? Here is why:

African facial traits on most of the famous Olmec stone heads and on many other Olmec sculptures are difficult to explain and have caused fierce controversy since they were first noted by scientists in the 19th century. Alternative claims that these traits (along with the ominpresent sinister "Olmec scowl") represent stylized "Jaguar faces" are possible, or maybe not. It depends on taste.

The "African looks" of so many Olmec facial representations have - understandably - fired the imagination of many Americans of African descent and Africans. Unfortunately, the results of genetic investigations (so far, at least) have been anything but clearcut and the matter remains more than a little murky. According to some researchers, contemporary Maya and other Amerind groups show African characteristics and even traces of African DNA, but the genetic picture in today's Veracruz and Tabasco states (the heartland of the Olmecs) above all is mixed with more recent African genetic influx from the slave trade of the 16th to the 18th centuries. That makes it very hard to isolate a numerically small African influx 5,000 or more years ago out of the tremendous background noise of more recent genetic mixing. The rapidly evolving new science of palaeogenetics will one day be able to clarify these matters, one hopes, but that time is not yet. The Olmecs were the first known city-builders in the Americas - and it would need an explanation of why Africans built cities and temples in America when nothing resembling them was built in Africa before it.

Olmecs deformed babies' skulls while they were still malleable and the front teeth filed into a specific shape. In cultures that still have these customs, the reason given is that "it makes people look beautiful" ... which does not really tell us why it is done or why some groups found such mutilation "beautiful".

If ever there has been a mystery people, the Olmecs are it. Nothing is known of their language and even their own name for themselves is unknown. "Olmec" means "rubber people" in Aztec, a much later reference to the lush growth of rubber trees in the Olmec core area. Their system of writing (the earliest in the Americas) is obsessed with calendaric notations and tells us virtually nothing about the Olmec people or their history.

Any search of "Olmec" on the internet or in libraries will bring to light a squirming mass of racial, religious, philosophical, linguistic, historical, prehistorical and technological if not intergalactic claims, theories and speculations, ranging from feasible to deranged. It is one of the few certain facts about the Olmecs that most of what hat has been written about them is no more than inspired guesswork. Some is worse than that. When reading up on the Olmecs, one does well to remember this, especially on the web.

The features of the Olmecs as seen on their carvings make them look like what has been described as "persons of low stature tending to dwarfish, slanted eyes that are puffy and with the epicanthic fold, a short wide nose, mouth with thick lips and corners turned downward, a prominent jaw and a short heavy neck." It could describe a Negrito having a bad day.

As regards the Negrito connection: on the subject of the Olmecs everbody is free to flog his hobby horse, so why not us at the Andaman Association, too? We do not know what racial group the Olmecs belong to: African, Amerind, Asian, Negrito, all have been mentioned, all the all have some slight genetic evidence for it, all have some supporters asnd detractors.

One possibility: those famous Olmec Negrid or Negritoid features could have been the features of a tiny ruling elite. Maybe just a boatful of people from Africa washed up on the shores of then primitive Mexico at an early date who showed the locals how to work large stones, set their artistic conventions and then, over generations, were absorbed into the much larger Amerind population, leaving behind a civilization that developed over the millennia from the seeds of a cultural convention planted by the few shipwrecked sailors. Well, more unlikely things have happened in history. There is only one problem with this: in Africa there is no known civilization that could have lost such extremely early and well-trained stonemasons to Mexico. Even the Egyptian stonemasons did not get really started until 4,500 years ago. It makes the early Egyptians a slight possibility and the only one in sight, since the rest of Africa, including Nubia, was still mostly hunting-gathering at that time. Another possibility is that our dates for the Olmecs are too early and that the huge stone heads (which are difficult to date) were made later than we think now. To cut a long story short: we should bear in mind that we know next to nothing and that we had better dampen the speculative frenzy a bit until more facts are available.

One completely separate line of investigation into the origins of the Olmec has been their uniquely early (for America) and truly astonishing system of writing. For a discussion of this see Olmec Writing and language later in this chapter. As usual in Olmec studies, the results have not clarified anything but have caused still more headscratching and controversy.

2. Olmec archaeology in place of the missing history

Olmec cities were above all religious centres constructed around a central mound used for many ceremonies. At a later stage of Olmec development, from around 2,900 years before the present, many mounds were replaced with pyramids.

The Olmec were a highly hierarchical society with a high priest or priest-king of some sort at its apex. The physical separation of the elite from the common people can be traced archaeologically: the two groups lived in separate residential areas - with all residential houses relatively simple structures made of wooden walls covered with clay and roofs covered with palm leaves. Only temples and other religious structures had more elaborate construction and stone work.

The periods during which Olmec civilization developed, flourished and faded away have been classified (as part of the classification of all pre-Columbian periods) as follows:

Early Preclassic: begins ca. 5,000 - 3,000 before the present
The permanent villages and later large chiefdoms appeare with village life based largely on agriculture, especially of maize, beans and squash. The beginning of the period sees the appearance of simple pottery vessels, often in the form of tecomates (gourd-shaped, rimless vessels). Food storage and efficient food processing in the form of manos and metates become important. Hunting and shellfish collection on the coasts remain important for animal proteins. Early pottery, in widespread use by 4,400 before the present, is decorated. From around 3,700 before the present, more sophisticated pottery decoration appears. By 3,600 before the present, large houses, mica mirrors, and elaborate figurines indicate differentiation in social status and wealth. The foundation for the Olmec culture is being laid. It begins to flourish around 3,150 before the present. The most important Early Preclassic Olmec site is San Lorenzo.

Middle Preclassic: ca. 3,000 - 2,400 before the present.
The religious and artistic traditions of the Olmecs rise and spread. The trend towards political centralization that had begun in the Early Preclassic continues, along with other traits that signal increasing social complexity. Olmec art develops elaborately carved stone stelae, jade figurines, and pottery, many showing the "were-jaguar" and baby-like motifs. San Lorenzo is abandoned (probably because of a lost war) but La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and Laguna de los Cerros grow in size and importance. Trade in valuable minerals, such as jade and obsidian, increases. Evidence appears for Olmec religious influence in artistic styles outside the Gulf Coast "heartland" (at sites like Chalcatzingo, Oxotitlan, and Juxtlahuaca Cave). Long-distance contacts are indicated by by Olmec materials found as far away as El Salvador and Costa Rica and there is evidence for early agricultural villages in both the Guatemalan highlands and the lowlands of the Petén and the Yucatán Peninsula. One of the earliest of these is the site of Cuello, Belize, where early pottery, house platforms and possible ceremonial structures have been uncovered. It is during this period that sites like Nakbe, El Mirador, Tikal and Uaxactún first develop into large villages. Evidence of influence from the Olmec culture is found at sites like Seibal, where a buried cache of jade axes similar to those discovered at La Venta was found.

Late Preclassic: 2,400 BC - 1,900 before the present
Early state-level societies in various parts of Mesoamerica appear. Population growth and increasingly sophisticated and varied religious traditions lead to the appearance of important centeres in the Valley of Mexico, highland Chiapas, the Gulf Coast, and the Maya area.Complex iconography representing the growth of widespread mythological systems is evident at sites like Izapa, in the Pacific foothills of Chiapas. Jade continues to be favored as a sign of elite status, and jade caches at sites like Chacsinkin (Yucatán) indicate that Olmec-style objects are being used by the Maya. Labour-intensive agriculture provides a stable subsistence base but one that requires coordination and constant attention. A most significant developments is the invention of writing systems for recording names and dates. Writing appears earliest in the Oaxaca Valley, then in Chiapas (Chiapa de Corzo), the Gulf Coast region in Tres Zapotes and highland Guatemala (Abaj Takalik, El Baúl, and Kaminaljuyu). The first writing systems appear during this period, showing up at La Venta on the Gulf Coast and at San José Mogote in the Oaxaca Valley of southern Mexico. The earliest recorded dates come from highland Chiapas (Abaj Takalik) and highland Guatemala (El Baúl). This period also sees the emergence of the earliest Maya ceremonialism based on the observation of celestial events, as evidenced by stucco masks representing Venus, the sun, and other supernaturals.

3. Olmec sculpture

Much Olmec art has a faint (and often not so faint) air of menace about it, at least to us moderns. The Olmec civilization certainly does not give the impression of having been a culture of laughter and merriment. Human sacrifice was practiced. Indeed, it was the Olmecs who passed their bloodthirsty tradition to later Mesoamerican cultures. The much later Aztects, for example, committed ritual mass slaughter on their temple pyramids until they were conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century. The Spanish stopped the awful practice - only to introduce the Aztecs to the more civilized Christian custom of burning witches and sorcerers at the stake.

One of the smaller of the famous monumental Olmec heads (Monument 1 at La Venta)

It is not known what these heads with their strange Negrid features, head-gear, and scowl represent: priests, rulers, gods, players of the sacred ball game? Nor is it known what function they played in Olmec religion and ceremonial. It has been speculated that they represent Olmec priest-kings dressed for the ritual ball game. Yes, could be, or maybe not.

The monumental heads range in height from 1.6 to 3 m and weigh from 9 to 11 metric tons. The figure (our very own George Weber; height 1.83 m) gives a good idea of scale.

The sculptures were hammered with stone tools out of the remarkably hard and very heavy rock and transported over considerable distances to their final destinations. It is not known how the enormously heavy loads were moved over hundreds of kilometers.

Modern attempts to move similar rocks with the technology thought to have been available to the Olmecs failed even over quite short distances over land. Attempts to move such rocks over waters sank the rafts and boats beneath them.

Below: Many dozens such monumental Olmec heads are known and new ones are being found every so often.
For a much larger picture gallery of such heads see http://images.google.ch/images?hl=en&q=Olmec+heads&btnG=Search+Images

Left:
Not all large Olmec statues follow the standard "Negrid head models" shown above. This full-body statue is rather smaller than most "heads" but still has the standard scowl. It stands in La Venta and has been named "Grandmother". Its purpose is as impenetrable as that of the "heads".

Right:
the Olmecs were accomplished architects, but this very rare example of an Olmec mosaic floor came as a surprise even to the experts.

Left:
This "Jaguar Baby" with its more than usually pronounced scowl supports the speculation that the characteristic Olmec facial expression might be a stylized Jaguar face rather than a scowl.

.

Left:
Yet another type of scowl or stylized Jaguar face.

Left:
The earliest known representation of that ancient Meso-American icon , the"feathered serpent" is Olmec.

Left:
The Olmecs could do non-scowling faces if they wanted to - but they rarely did.The meaning of this non-scowling sculpture is not known.

The earliest forerunners of the Olmec style of art are observable 4,000 years before the present (see Tlapacoyan site). Where the makers of this earliest "Olmec" art the same people that would later become the Olmecs? We do not know. Whoever the Olmecs were, their influence on later Mesoamerican civilizations is difficult to over-estimate - they were to the Americas what the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Greeks all rolled-into-one were for western civilization.

Who were the Olmecs and where did they come from? Were they one people, or many unrelated groups held together by a (priestly) ruling class? Did their civilization develop in their core area or did it come from outside, perhaps being imposed on the local population? What happened to the Olmecs after their civilization was replaced by a variety of "conventional" Amerindian civilizations (e.g. the Maya, The Zapotecs, etc)? We do not know. After the disappareance of the Olmecs, no group is known to have continued calling itself "Olmec". Was the disappearance of their civilization just the disappearance of a ruling elite or of an entire people? Again, we do not know. Genetic results from people now living in what had been the Olmec core area should have some answer, or at least a hint at some answers. Unfortunately, they do not. The controversy and the search for answers continues.

Figures holding a child - like so much Olmec art - are standardised gestures the meaning of which we can only guess at. Do they symbolize death in general? Do they depict ritual child sacrifice? Or were they standardized symbols of Olmec beliefs representing a real or mythical event, such as the Christian symbol of the cross?

The Olmecs were a civilization with artists capable of making veritable masterpieces. The example on the left is full of recognizable human pain and anguish. The one on the right is less accomplished but is just as clearly designed to pass on the same unknown message.

The Olmecs remain one of the world's least understood civilizations.

4. Ceremonial and buried art

Olmec life was strictly regulated by a large number of ceremonies. Like all primitives and early civilizations, the Olmecs also felt such ceremonies essential if seasonal and other other cycles of life were to continue undisturbed. We know almost nothing of Olmec beliefs and ceremonies but the discovery of an Olmec votive offering at La Venta gives us a rare glimpse into their lost spiritual world - if we could only understand it.

Left:
We do not know why a ceremony was modelled and buried below the surface of a temple courtyard at some 3,000 years ago. The find has been named officially "La Venta Offering No. 4."
Some unknown time after the initial burial, the site was opened again through the courtyard floor (clearly, someone knew exactly where the burial was located) and excavated to the level of the heads of the buried figurines. After this "inspection", the offering was covered up again and never opened again until our days.

Below:
Photograph of the buried ceremonial figures. The six "model stelae" at the back are celts.

5. Olmec language and writing

The Olmecs are the first American civilization to (probably) have had a system of writing as well as (certainly) a method of calendrical-mathematical notation that was later developed further especially by the Mayas. However, only if the Olmec writing can be deciphered and read with confidence will it be possible to establish what language the Olmecs used. Uf all their writing is calendrical in nature, even that will not be possible. Despite several claims to the contrary, no attempt at deciphering has yet succeeded.

Depending on who you listen to, the Olmec script is has been brought to the Olmecs from western Africa or developed locally. Here are the two most respectable attempts at deciphering with their respective conclusions (which, infortunately, seem to be mutually quite exclusive). All attempts at identifying the origins of the Olmecs (the people as well as their culture) have attracted ferocious controversy. There are two main theories:

1. African: origin (Winters)

The Vai script was invented around 1830 in what is now Liberia, West Africa, by one Duvalo Bukare. It is still used by the Manding (Mandinke-Bambara tribe in what is now Liberia, Gambia and Senegal. Dr. Winters claims to have discovered that he could read the Olmec inscriptions by using the sound value of the Vai signs and that this meant the Olmecs spoke a form of the Manding, a language still spoken in West Africa (Winters, 1979, 1980, 1981,1984) and that therefore Olmec civilization (of not the Olmecs themselves) is of African origin. This is not quite as outlandish as it sounds since the Vai script put together by Bukare, it is claimed, was based on genuinely ancient symbols used in antiquity in the north-Africa-Sahara region. Still, it is a shaky connection. Also, Dr. Winters is almost too keen to connect people from Africa with ancient America by any means, as a list of some of his titles shows:
- Winters, C.A. 1977. "The influence of the Mnade scripts on American ancient writing systems." Bulletin de l'IFAN, vol. 39, ser.B, no 2: 405-431
- Winters, C.A. 1979. "Manding writing in the New World" - Part 1. Journal of African Civilization, vol. 1(1): 81-97
- Winters, C.A. Dec 1981/ Jan 1982. "Mexico's Black Heritage", The Black Collegian 76-82.
- Winters,C.A. 1983. "The ancient Manding script". I. Sertima (ed.), in Blacks in Science:ancient and modern, (ed.) by I. Sertima, pp. 208-214, Transaction Books, London
- Winters, C.A. 1984a. "Blacks in ancient America." Colorlines, 3(2):27-28
- Winters, C.A. 1984b. "Africans found first American Civilization," African Monitor, 1:16-18
- Winters, C.A. 1986."The Migration routes of the Proto-Mande," The Mankind Quarterly 27(1):77-96.

Genetics, so far, has not brought to light any evidence of a massive prehistoric influx of Africans into the Americas. This does not necessarily mean Dr. Winters is wrong. A Manding ship could just possibly have been blown off course and landed in the Olmec area. The numerically small crew could then have taught the primitive Olmec tribes their skills and their language. Not a very likely scenario but not entirely impossible if there was a Manding civilization in West Africa 5,000 years ago. Was there? And: could a numerically small crew of outsiders have so decisively inflluenced the style of a future civilization that then lasted at least 3,000 years? The controversyhas a political aspect in the USA where the Winters scenario is popular among American blacks and hated by native Amerind people. Not a good basis for a dispassionate evaluation of the arguments and the few facts.

2. Local American origin (Justeson and Kaufmann)

In 1993, Dr. Justeson of the State University of New York at Albany and Dr. Kaufmann of the University of Pittsburgh also claimed to have deciphered Olmec writing. To decipher this language the present-day Amerind Mixe-Zoquean languages of Mexico were used as a basis for the reconstruction of the vocabulary and grammar of the hypothesized Olmec language. Dr. Kaufmann compared their efforts to the reconstruction of ancient Latin by working backwards from modern romance languages such as Spanish, French and Italian. After reconstructing the Olmec language in this way, the two scientists said they had found found more than 150 matching signs in Olmec writing but the method and its results were not widely accepted.
- Justeson, J. and Kaufman T. 1993. "A decipherment of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing". Science 259:1703-1711

The matter remains unresolved and highly controversial. What language family the language of the early Olmecs belonged to is, of course, impossible to say until the Olmec writing has been deciphered definitively.

For links to some of the controversial "readings" of the Olmec script, see at the end of this chapter.

An example of Olmec writing.

6. The Olmec-Mayan calendar - wonder of an early civilization

The Olmecs had two calendars that ran side by side in a 52-year cycle called "The Long Count":

- a 260 day ritual calendar

- a 360-day secular calendar (later "improved" to a 365-day calendar)

Each day and month had a specific number and a specific name.

The Long Count calendar was invented by by the Olmecs and later refined further by the Maya. It required the use of zero as a place-holder within its vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. A shell glyph was used as a symbol for zero. The earliest Long Count dates are found within the Olmec heartland and so it is assumed that the zero is an Olmec rather than a Mayan invention.

The Olmecs had a day-count calendar, which combined the 52-year-cycle of the 365-day secular calendar with the 260-day ritual cycle. The Olmec calendar was probably somewhat less complex that that of the later Mayans but it could still give us the oldest precise date of 13 August 3,114 BC (Olmec notation 7.16.6.16.8). It is unlikely that something special happened on this day and more likely that the date had been calculated "theoretically" by Olmec priest-astronomers who then regarded it as the "beginning of the world".

With two time-counts running side-by-side, the priests who were in charge of the calendrical mathematics noted that the lowest common denominator is 18,980 days, which is 73 cycles of the 260-day sacred and 52 cycles of the 365-day secular calendar. If the first day of the sacred calendar (1 Imix) fell on the first day of the secular calendar (0 Pop) in a given year, it would take 52 years before the same two day-names and day-numbers would again coincide. This is the mathematical discovery that leadto the discovery of the 52-year cycle to which the idea was added that events would repeat every 52 years.

The innovation of the "long count" consisted above all on connecting the 260-day sacred calendar with the 365-day secular calendar into what we call the "Long Count". This idea was a veritable quantum leap in intellectual sophistication. It gave the Olmecs a a "timetable" for the world's creation.

Few people in thos days would reach an age of more than 35 or thereabouts and it would be rare individual who would see the recurrence of the same day names and day numbers in his or her lifetime. In many later Meso-American civilizations, the 52-year cycle was regarded as a "lifetime". As a result, in most of the cultures, important events such as births and deaths and accessions to power by key members of the society were seldom specified more closely than to the 52-year period in which they occurred.

Since the Olmecs ansd Mayas thought that events repeated themselves with every 52-year cycle, they usually wrote down dates only in terms of Number and Day name within the current 52-year period. They did not often find it necessary to note the specific 52-year cycle in which the events happened. This limited system has been called the Short Count calendar and it has been the cause of some frustration among archaeologists.

Drawing of Stela C from the Olmec city of Tres Zapotes

1. The triple element and Jaguar glyph below mark the beginning of a Long Count date. The Jaguar head represents the patron deity of the solar year calendar month in which the date falls.

2. The five bar-and-dot numbers read from the top 7.16.6.16.18, indicating the number of days that had elapsed since the beginning of the Great Cycle on 4 Ahau 8 Cumku (13 August 3,114 BC). The date the inscription refers to falls 1,125,698 days after the beginning of the Great Cycle , i.e. 3 September 32 BC. The precise sum of more than a million days was calculated by adding a complex sequence of calendar periods:
07 Baktuns = 7x 144,000 days = 1,008,000 days
16 Katuns = 16 x 7,200 days = 115,200 days
06 Tuns = 6 x 360 days = 2,160 days
16 Uinals = 16 x 20 days = 320 days
18 Kins = 18 x 1 = 18 days
Total: 1, 125,698 days.

3. The gylph at the bottom specifies that this day was Etz'nab in the ritual calendar

The calculation gives an idea of the complexities of the Olmec-Mayan calendar and of the astonishing capabilities of their priest-mathematicians.

By comparison: the Zero for "missing steps" outside the Americas was invented in India around 600 AD and from there came to the Arabs (Arabic figures). Its first documented use in Europe was in the 11th century AD but it took several more centuries before its use became widespread in the West..

The Olmec-Maya "zero" represents an empty sea shell

The date circled in red signifies 3 September of the year 32 BC (7.16.6.16.18. -a dot symbolized "1", a horizontal line "5", and there was a special sign for zero. The Olmecs had a vigesimal (base-20, as opposed to our own decimal) counting system that was later used across all major civilizations in Meso-America. The mathematical-calendaric system seems to have been an Olmec invention that was later developed and refined by the Mayas to a degree unmatched anywhere else.

It is highly likely that this date refers to a major event that took place a few days earlier: on the morning of 31 August of the year 32 BC there was no sunrise in Olmecland. A total solar eclipse passed right over the Olmec core area.On that day, the sun rose, hidden behind the jet-black moon with only the merest sliver of light around the outer edges. Such an eerie sunrise would impress even today, despite all the forewarnings we moderns would get. Whether the Olmec priests had the capacity to calculate such an event beforehand remains an open question. But with or without priestly prophecies, such an event must have been shattering to all who witnessed it.

We cannot be quite sure that the date 7.16.6.16.18 really does refer so this event but it is very likely. If it does, the gap of 4 days between solar eclipse and recorded date must remain unexplained. Perhaps the priests thought it wiser to put a few days' safety margin between the end-of-the-world-event and its recording in stone.

Figures 6 and 16 from the calendar stone shown above in close-up.