Olmec stone heads: mysteries of a lost civilization

Three millennia ago, the territory of modern Mexico was inhabited by the Olmecs, which translated from the Aztec language means “rubber people.” These inhabitants received their name because of their location; rubber was produced in their area. But the Olmecs, who lived during Aztec times, should not be confused with the ancient inhabitants of this Gulf Coast. It is with these first Indian people that the concept of Olmec culture is now associated, and the main thing that comes to mind when mentioning them is the giant stone heads of the Olmecs.

The ancestors of modern Americans?

The time of the ancient Olmec civilization is estimated between the 2nd millennium BC and the beginning of our era. The Olmecs disappeared one and a half millennia before the Aztecs arrived here. It is sometimes believed that it was these Olmecs who became the progenitors of civilizations in Central America.

But in fact, we know little about what the Olmecs were like. No traces of their appearance and development have been found anywhere in Mexico and America; one gets the impression that this people arose here out of thin air. Their way of life, faith and religion are also unknown. There is no data on their origin, language, or distribution. The humid climate even destroyed all the skeletons of representatives of this civilization. The Olmecs are still shrouded in deep mystery.

But what is well known about these people is that they were excellent stone craftsmen. Among their works are detailed jade carvings, the creation of altars from huge monoliths, and, of course, the famous Olmec stone heads. These heads, the size of which exceeds the height of a person, now pose a huge mystery to researchers and provide food for thought.

African stone head sitters

The heads are carved from basalt blocks. The largest head has a total weight of about 50 tons and a height of 3.4 meters. But what is most surprising is that the heads depict people of the Negroid race. These Africans are depicted wearing helmets, their earlobes are pierced, their thick lips are turned down at the corners, and their eyes are slightly cross-eyed. In general, it remains a mystery who the ancient Olmecs depicted in their giant works of art.

Available big secrets and for the production of heads. Considering that these people did not have carts or experience using animal traction, the question arises about the delivery of monoliths, which could take place over a hundred kilometers. In their conditions, all that was left was to roll our heads manually, although perhaps we greatly underestimate this civilization. The question also arises about the processing of basalt blocks. Among Stone Age people, the hardest material was... basalt. Or maybe everything is much simpler, and the heads were made at a much later period? In general, scientists will have to puzzle over the secrets of this people for a long time.

The head was first discovered by Matthew Stirling in 1930. In his description, he noted the basalt origin, the presence of a foundation made of stone blocks, a terrifying appearance, careful processing and unique proportions. And, of course, he did not forget to mention the black origin of his nature.

Race Meetings in America

Other Olmec monolithic structures also contain images of people. Thus, Olmec steles depict meetings of different races, including Africans. On the Indian pyramid near the city of Oaxaca, you again come across steles with scenes of the Indians capturing whites and Africans.

Of course, the presence of Africans in Central America raises many questions. Now there are hypotheses that during the migration that took place around 15,000 BC, a group of the Negroid race could actually enter the territory of modern America. Then it turns out that Africans became one of the indigenous races of the New World, which again causes a lot of controversy in the scientific community.

There are assumptions dating back to more recent times. Thus, research by Thor Heyerdahl and Tim Severin showed that the ocean was not a barrier between the Old and New Worlds, but may have been a medium of exchange and the first ancient voyages long before Columbus.

And although the Olmecs disappeared without a trace, their culture continues to amaze and raise many questions today, especially with regard to African stone heads.

Olmec heads are already known to everyone today. There is probably not a single tourist who, having arrived in Mexico, would not want to admire them. IN academia Olmec heads prefer to pass by, giving them a simple explanation and not going into small “insignificant” details.

Why do the Olmec heads so confuse and even frighten the “bright heads” of humanity?

The first such head was found in La Venta in 1862. Today, 17 similar heads are known in different places in Mexico. Absolutely all of them are made from a single block of basalt. They are all different sizes and depict different people. The largest such head is 3.4 meters in height, and the smallest is 1.5 meters, but on average their height is approximately 2 meters. Weight balances from 10 to 35 tons.

All heads have the same style of execution and, as research has shown, are made of basalt, which is located as much as 90 kilometers from the location of the heads. How the Olmecs, who didn’t even know wheels, could drag a block weighing ten tons remains a mystery. True, the official version says that they melted these heads down the river on reed rafts. There is only one “minor detail” - the nearest river is 40 kilometers away through swamps and impenetrable jungle.

There is one more point. The Olmecs had the most primitive tools, not even iron ones. It doesn't fit in any way with the ear to head inner tube in one of the heads. In such hard monolithic rock as basalt, and even two meters high, it was simply impossible to do this with these tools.

But scientists experience the greatest confusion with the fact that the heads are clearly of Negroid race. And this is in Mexico, where, in theory, there was no connection with Africa during this period. Official science stated that these are apparently sculptures of the heads of Olmec rulers. They were made after the death of the leaders. Something like a monument. Only bad luck - the Olmecs had other images of human heads with clearly American features. However, this “trifle” is cleverly avoided and they prefer not to discuss it.

True, there is another problem here. A vessel in the shape of an elephant was found among the Olmec culture!!! But the elephants in Mexico all died out during ice age. Where did the Olmecs know these animals???

September 12th, 2015

All these heads are carved from solid blocks of basalt. The smallest have a height of 1.5 m, the largest is about 3.5 m. Most Olmec heads are about 2 m. Accordingly, the weight of these huge sculptures ranges from 10 to 35 tons!

When you look at the heads, many questions immediately arise to which you still want to get a clear answer from the all-knowing science. Facial features of each of the 17 giant heads not individual and they all have one common feature– characteristic negroid features. Where did blacks come from in pre-Columbian America, if, according to official science, there could have been no contacts between Africa and America before Columbus? And the Olmecs themselves did not look like blacks at all, as follows from numerous other figurines and figurines. And only these 17 heads are endowed with Negroid features.

With the help of what tools, in the absence of metal (again, according to the official version), basalt, one of the strongest stones, from which the heads are made, was processed with such precision and detail? Is it really a different stone?

How were multi-ton blocks, some weighing up to 35 tons, transported to the processing site 90 km from the place of their extraction through the jungle over rough terrain? Despite the fact that (according to the same version) the Olmecs did not know wheels (by the way, it has already been proven that they knew).

Now let's try to answer these questions...

Photo 2.

The Olmec civilization is considered the first, “mother” civilization of Mexico. Like all other first civilizations, it appeared immediately and in a “ready-made form”: with developed hieroglyphic writing, an accurate calendar, canonized art, and developed architecture. According to the ideas of modern researchers, the Olmec civilization arose around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. and lasted for about a thousand years. The main centers of this culture were located in the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico in the territory of the modern states of Tobasco and Veracruz. But the Olmec cultural influence can be traced throughout Central Mexico. Until now, nothing is known about the people who created this first Mexican civilization. The name "Olmec", meaning "people of rubber", was given by modern scientists. But where did this people come from, what language did they speak, where did they disappear centuries later - all these main questions remain unanswered after more than half a century of research into Olmec culture.

The Olmecs are Mexico's oldest and most mysterious civilization. These peoples settled along the entire Gulf Coast around the third millennium BC.
The Coatzecoalcos was the main river of the Olmecs. Its name translated means “ Sanctuary of the Snake».

According to legends, it was in this river that farewell to the ancient deity Quetzalcoatl took place. Quetzalcoatl, or the Great Cuculan, as the Mayans called him, was a feathered serpent and a mysterious figure. This snake had a powerful physique, noble facial features, and, in general, a completely human appearance.
I wonder where he came from among the red-skinned and beardless Olmecs? According to legends, he came and left on the water. It was he who taught the Olmecs all crafts, moral principles and the calculation of time. Quetzalcoatl condemned sacrifices and was against violence.

Photo 3.

Photo 4.

The largest Olmec monuments are San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes. These were real urban centers, the first in Mexico. They included large ceremonial complexes with earthen pyramids, an extensive system of irrigation canals, city blocks and numerous necropolises.

The Olmecs achieved real perfection in stone processing, including very hard rocks. Olmec jade products are rightfully considered masterpieces of ancient American art. Olmec monumental sculpture included multi-ton altars made of granite and basalt, carved steles, and human-sized sculptures. But one of the most remarkable and mysterious features of this civilization are the huge stone heads.

The first such head was found back in 1862 in La Venta. To date, 17 such giant human heads have been discovered, ten of them come from San Loresno, four from La Venta, and the rest from two more monuments of Olmec culture. All these heads are carved from solid blocks of basalt. The smallest are 1.5 m high, the largest head, found at the Rancho La Cobata monument, reaches 3.4 m in height. The average height of most Olmec heads is about 2 m. Accordingly, the weight of these huge sculptures ranges from 10 to 35 tons!

Photo 6.

All heads are made in the same stylistic manner, but it is obvious that each of them is a portrait of a specific person. Each head is topped with a headdress that most closely resembles an American football player's helmet. But all hats are individual, there is not a single repetition. All heads have carefully detailed ears with decorations in the form of large earrings or ear inserts. Ear piercing was a typical tradition for all ancient cultures of Mexico. One of the heads, the largest one from Rancho La Cobata, depicts a man with his eyes closed; all the other sixteen heads have their eyes wide open. Those. each such sculpture was supposed to depict a specific person with a characteristic set of individual traits. It can be said that Olmec heads are images of specific people. But despite the individuality of their features, all the giant Olmec heads are united by one common and mysterious feature.

Photo 7.

The portraits of the people depicted in these sculptures have pronounced Negroid features: a wide, flattened nose with large nostrils, plump lips and big eyes. Such features do not fit in with the main anthropological type of the ancient population of Mexico. In Olmec art, whether sculpture, relief or small sculptures, in most cases, the typical Indian appearance characteristic of the American race is reflected. But not on giant heads. Such Negroid features were noted by the first researchers from the very beginning. This led to the emergence of various hypotheses: from assumptions about the migration of people from Africa to claims that such a racial type was characteristic of the oldest inhabitants Southeast Asia, who were part of the first settlers to America. However, this problem was quickly put to rest by representatives of official science. It was too inconvenient to consider that there could have been any contacts between America and Africa at the very dawn of civilization. Official theory didn't mean them.

Photo 8.

Photo 9.

And if so, then the Olmec heads are images of local rulers, after whose death such original memorial monuments were made. But Olmec heads are truly a unique phenomenon for ancient America. In the Olmec culture itself there are similar analogies, i.e. sculpted human heads. But unlike the 17 “Negro” heads, they depict portraits of people of a typical American race, are smaller in size and made in accordance with a completely different pictorial canon. In other cultures ancient mexico there is nothing like it. In addition, one can ask a simple question: if these are images of local rulers, then why are there so few of them, if we speak in relation to the thousand-year history of the Olmec civilization?

And how should we deal with the problem of Negroid traits? No matter what the ruling powers say historical science theories, in addition to them there are also facts. The Anthropological Museum of the city of Jalapa (Veracruz state) houses an Olmec vessel in the form of a sitting elephant.

It is considered proven that elephants in America disappeared with the end of the last glaciation, i.e. approximately 12 thousand years ago. But the Olmec knew the elephant, so much so that it was even depicted in figured ceramics. Either elephants still lived in the Olmec era, which contradicts paleozoological data, or Olmec craftsmen were familiar with African elephants, which contradicts modern historical views. But the fact remains that you can, if not touch it with your hands, then see it with your own eyes in a museum. Unfortunately, academic science diligently avoids such awkward “trifles.” In addition, in the last century, in different areas of Mexico, at monuments with traces of the influence of the Olmec civilization (Monte Alban, Tlatilco), burials were discovered, the skeletons of which anthropologists identified as belonging to the Negroid race.

Photo 11.

Photo 12.

Photo 13.

Giant Olmec heads pose many paradoxical questions to researchers. One of the heads from San Lorenzo has an internal tube connecting the sculpture's ear and mouth. How could such a complex internal channel be made in a monolithic basalt block 2.7 m high using primitive (not even metal) tools? Geologists who studied the Olmec heads determined that the basalt from which the heads at La Venta were made came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, the distance to which, measured in a straight line, is 90 kilometers. How did the ancient Indians, who did not even know wheels, transport monolithic stone blocks weighing 10-20 tons over rough terrain? American archaeologists believe that the Olmecs could have used reed rafts, which, along with cargo, were floated down the river into the Gulf of Mexico, and along the shore they delivered basalt blocks to their urban centers. But the distance from the Tuxtla quarries to the nearest river is about 40 km, and it is a dense swampy jungle.

Photo 14.

In some myths about the creation of the world, which have survived to this day from various Mexican peoples, the emergence of the first cities is associated with newcomers from the north. According to one version, they sailed by boat from the north and landed at the Panuco River, then walked along the coast to Potonchan at the mouth of Jalisco (the ancient Olmec center of La Venta is located in this area). Here the aliens destroyed the local giants and founded the first Tamoanchan cultural center mentioned in legends.

According to another myth, seven tribes came from the north to the Mexican Highlands. Two peoples already lived here - the Chichimecs and the Giants. Moreover, the giants inhabited the lands east of modern Mexico City - the regions of Puebla and Cholula. Both peoples led a barbaric lifestyle, obtained food by hunting and ate raw meat. The newcomers from the north drove out the Chichemeks and destroyed the giants. Thus, according to the mythology of a number of Mexican peoples, giants were the predecessors of those who created the first civilizations in these territories. But they could not resist the aliens and were destroyed. By the way, a similar situation took place in the Middle East and it is described in sufficient detail in the Old Testament.

Photo 15.

Mentions of a race of ancient giants that preceded historical peoples are found in many Mexican myths. So the Aztecs believed that the earth was inhabited by giants in the era of the First Sun. They called the ancient giants “kiname” or “kinametine”. The Spanish chronicler Bernardo de Sahagún identified these ancient giants with the Toltecs and believed that it was they who erected the giant pyramids in Teotehuacan and Cholula.

Bernal Diaz, a member of the Cortez expedition, wrote in his book “The Conquest of New Spain” that after the conquistadors gained a foothold in the city of Tlaxcala (east of Mexico City, Puebla region), local Indians told them that in very ancient times people had settled in this area enormous height and strength. But since they had bad character and bad customs, the Indians exterminated them. To confirm their words, the inhabitants of Tlaxcala showed the Spaniards a bone ancient giant. Diaz writes that it was a femur and its length was equal to the height of Diaz himself. Those. the height of these giants was more than three times the height of an ordinary person.

Photo 16.

In the book “The Conquest of New Spain,” he describes how the Indians told them that in ancient times people of enormous stature settled in these places, but the Indians did not agree with their characters and killed everyone. Quote from the book:
« They also reported that before their arrival the country was inhabited by giants, rude and wild, who later either died out or were destroyed. As proof, they showed the femur of such a giant. Indeed, she was the size of my full height, and I’m not small. And there were a fair number of such bones; we were amazed and horrified at such a breed of past times and decided to send samples to His Majesty in Spain».
Russian translation of the book: http://www.gramotey....140358220925600
The quote is taken from the chapter “Friendship with Tlaxcala.”

There was no point in lying to the author, the matters being discussed were much more important than long-extinct and non-dangerous giants, and this was said and shown by the Indian casually, as a matter of course. And the book is about something completely different. And if a modern TV channel can still be suspected of falsifying facts in order to increase ratings, then a person who publicly promised 500 years ago to send “non-existent” giant human bones to the king can only be suspected of idiocy. Which is very difficult to do after reading his book.
Traces of giants have been found in this area and in the manuscripts of the Aztecs (Aztec codices), who later lived in the same places, in the form of drawings, and in many Mexican myths.

Drawing from an Aztec manuscript. Judging by how many people are pulling one big man, it is also very heavy. Maybe it's his head etched in stone?

Photo 17.

In addition, from various sources it is clear that the ancient giants inhabited a certain territory, namely the eastern part of central Mexico up to the Gulf Coast. It is quite reasonable to assume that the giant heads of the Olmecs symbolized victory over the race of giants and the victors erected these monuments in the centers of their cities in order to perpetuate the memory of their defeated predecessors. On the other hand, how can such an assumption be reconciled with the fact that all the giant Olmec heads have individual facial features?

Photo 18.

Maybe those researchers are right who believe that the giant heads were portraits of rulers? But the study of paradoxical phenomena is always complicated by the fact that such historical phenomena rarely fit into the system of conventional logic. That's why they are paradoxical. Moreover, myths, like any historical source, are subject to influences dictated by the current political situation. Mexican myths were recorded by Spanish chroniclers in the 16th century. Information about events that happened tens of centuries before this time could have been transformed several times. The image of giants could be distorted to please the victors. Why not assume that giants were rulers of the Olmec cities for a time? And why not also assume that this ancient people of giants belonged to the Negroid race?

The ancient Ossetian epic “Tales of the Narts” is entirely imbued with the theme of the struggle of the Narts with the giants. They were called uaigi. But, what is most interesting, they were called black uaigs. And although the epic does not mention the skin color of the Caucasian giants anywhere, the adjective “black”, in relation to the Uaigs, is used in the epic as a qualitative, and not as a figurative concept. Of course, such a comparison of facts relating to the ancient history of peoples so distant from each other may seem too bold. But our knowledge about distant eras is too scanty.

Photo 19.

It remains only to remember the great poet A.S. Pushkin, who used the rich heritage of Russian folklore in his work. In "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the main character encounters the head of a giant standing alone in an open field and defeats it. The same theme of defeating ancient giants and the same image of a giant head. And such a coincidence cannot be a mere coincidence.

Graham Hancock in the book “Traces of the Gods” he writes: “The most amazing thing was that Tres Zapotes was not a Mayan city at all. It was completely, exclusively, undeniably Olmec. This meant that it was the Olmecs, and not the Mayans, who invented the calendar, that it was the Olmec culture, and not the Mayans, that was the “progenitor” of the cultures of Central America... Olmec much older than Mayan. They were a skilled, civilized, technically advanced people, and it was they who invented the dot and dash calendar, in which the starting point is a mysterious date August 13, 3114 BC."

Most Olmec stone heads depict a man with Negroid facial features. But 2000 years ago there were no black Africans in the New World; the first of them appeared much later than the Conquest, when the slave trade began. However, there is solid evidence from paleoanthropologists that one of the migrations to the territory of the American continent during the last ice age actually included people of the Negroid race. This migration took place around 15 thousand years BC

In San Lorenzo, the Olmecs built an artificial hill more than 30 meters, as part of a huge structure 1200 meters long and 600 meters wide. Archaeologist Michael Coe During excavations in 1966, he made a number of finds, including over twenty artificial reservoirs connected by a very complex network of gutters lined with basalt. Part of this network was built into the watershed. When this place was excavated, water again began to flow from there in heavy rains, as it had done for more than three thousand years. The main drainage line ran from east to west. Three auxiliary lines were cut into it, and the connections were made very competently from a technical point of view. Having carefully examined the system, archaeologists were forced to admit that they could not understand the purpose of this complex system of water conduits and other hydraulic structures.

Olmec still remain a mystery to archaeologists. No traces of Olmec evolution could be found, as if this people appeared out of nowhere. Nothing is known about the social organization, rituals and belief system of the Olmecs, what language they spoke, what ethnic group they belonged to, and not a single Olmec skeleton has survived.

The Mayans inherited their calendar from the Olmecs, who used it a thousand years before the Mayans. But where did the Olmecs get it from? What level of technical and scientific development civilization to develop such a calendar?

Let's continue the topic of giants: here we discussed well, and here's a plus as proof and. In general, you might be interested to know and The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -

Nobody knows where they came from, where their homeland was. They appeared on the territory of modern Mexico about three and a half thousand years ago and began to build cities and erect pyramids. They created a special hieroglyphic writing that no one can read yet. As a souvenir for their descendants, they left giant heads carved from basalt. Who are they, the Olmecs? Their history is full of question marks, and even recent archaeological research has shed little light on their fate.

Paradise defeated, mute, speechless
Ramon Lopez Velarde

It was these stone heads with slanted eyes and thick lips that glorified the Olmec people. Lost among tropical vegetation, these meter-long blocks, carved from solid basalt, seem eternal. The first of these prehistoric sites was discovered in 1862, south of Veracruz, in a wetland on the Gulf Coast. The head, considered a fragment of a destroyed statue, reached one and a half meters in height and weighed about eight tons. What then could the colossus itself be like, looking from a height of many meters at the surrounding forest? And was there a colossus?

So suddenly she announced herself ancient civilization, completely forgotten by descendants and preserved by the forest wilds. It arose in the eastern part of Mexico, where, it would seem, there were no prerequisites for the formation of a great culture. Why here, among the dense tropical forests and swamps, among the labyrinth of rivers and streams, a civilization was born that became a model for many peoples?

Today, historians consider the Olmecs to be the “fathers of local history”, the “cultural heroes” of Mesoamerica - Mexico and Central America - the forerunners of the Mayans, Zapotecs and Aztecs. From 1200 to 400 BC new era, that is, in the era, by the standards of the Old World, that passed between the Trojan War and the “Golden Age of Athens,” the Olmecs dominated the entire region. Their works of art were highly valued, they were imitated by the tribes and peoples who lived here, their religion was accepted, their political orders they sought to borrow and master economic skills.

And despite all this, real research into their culture began only six decades ago.

Rome of the New World

Numerous rivers made it easier for the Olmecs to move from one end of the country to the other. The main means of transport were boats and, in the case of freight transport, rafts. Without this, it would be extremely difficult to get through the thicket of the forest, and the small tribes of hunters and gatherers who settled here would remain disunited, living in the same primitive savagery as the inhabitants of the Amazon forests. Every year the rivers flooded, bringing fertile silty sediment to the fields. The land in this hot, humid country could produce two crops a year.

The staple food was maize; Beans and cassava, pumpkins and sweet potatoes were also grown in the fields. They bred domestic animals: dogs (their meat was also used for food), turkeys and, possibly, tapirs, as well as bees. A common activity was fishing. The abundance of food made it possible to store it and free part of the population from work agriculture. Many Olmecs became artisans, artists, and scientists.

IN early period In their history - at the time when the royal-loving Egyptians immortalized the name of Tutankhamun with his unforgettable tomb - the Olmecs built houses surrounded by bulky adobe walls. Several centuries later, when Homer composed his Odyssey, the fundamental principles of their architecture became different. Clay buildings, which required regular repairs, were replaced by dwellings made of cut stone.

The oldest Olmec settlement, San Lorenzo, was founded in a swampy area around 1500 BC. Three centuries later, a ceremonial center is built here, and a city is built on an artificial embankment 12 meters high and measuring 1200 x 770 meters. Scientists estimate that about ten million tons of earth had to be transported here to build this embankment. All this was done by people who did not know the wheel, had neither carts nor draft animals, and lived in a country where there were no roads.

Archaeologists have discovered an underground water supply system in San Lorenzo. Numerous stone statues and colossal heads were erected throughout the city. However, around 900 BC, the stone sculptures are destroyed. Perhaps the city was captured by alien tribes, and its population - about a thousand people lived here - fled to escape the war. But there are other assumptions...

From this time on, the city of La Venta, founded around 1000 BC, became the most important center of the Olmecs. Its history is well documented. The city occupied an area measuring 2.5 x 1 kilometer, where up to 18 thousand people lived. They were mainly engaged in agriculture and crafts, primarily jade processing.

In the middle of the city, a pyramid of compacted clay 31 meters high was erected. The dimensions of its base were 178 x 73 meters. Outwardly, it resembled a volcano with grooves along the slopes. On the upper platform of the pyramid there was probably a temple in which a sacrificial fire burned - it symbolized the crater of the volcano.

Archaeological finds made here indicate the absence of metals and, at the same time, brilliant skills in processing stone and clay from which vessels and figurines were made. Jade became a symbol of wealth in La Venta, and later throughout Central America. Jade jewelry was placed in the tombs of rulers and their entourage. Particularly interesting are the so-called mosaic courtyards - panels, most often with the image of a jaguar. As soon as such a courtyard was completed, it was immediately covered with earth, probably dedicating it to the underground gods. It was believed that the entrance to their world was guarded by a divine jaguar, or jaguar-man.

During the excavations of La Venta, everything was discovered that is found when studying the ruins of any major city that arose in Mesoamerica in the next two and a half thousand years. Like the European capitals of the New Age, comparing their appearance with the streets and squares of Rome, the Mayan and Toltec cities also tried to be like La Venta. Monuments of architecture and crafts, grounds for ritual ball games, cultural achievements (hieroglyphic writing, calendar) - all of these characteristic features The Olmec civilization is now preserved and inherited by the peoples inhabiting Mesoamerica, like the Latin alphabet of the Romans in the Old World, like Roman numerals and the Julian calendar. It was the Olmecs who formed an elite for the first time in the history of this region. It was the Olmecs who first began to worship the main deity of Mesoamerica - Jaguar. The Olmecs also created a number system similar to that of the Mayans.

Stone heads Olmec

A stone head, found a century and a half ago, made historians talk about a mysterious people who lived in ancient times on the outskirts of Mexico and were distinguished by their love of huge statues. Now we know that the design was not statues - heads. They can certainly be called one of the strangest sculptures in the world. Round heads, without any hint of a neck, rest directly on the ground. In principle, they can only be compared with the memorial idols from Easter Island. Even though they are on average three to four times taller, the heads of the Olmecs are more than two thousand years older, and they are made much more skillfully. The largest of them reaches a height of 3.4 meters and weighs 50 tons.

The monumental sculpture of the Olmecs - in comparison with the European one - is almost reduced to balls topped with some kind of helmet - a headdress that was worn during a ritual ball game. These heads, as if beheaded, look at us with inexpressible sadness. Archaeologists do not know who served as the prototype for the unusual sculptures: the Olmec rulers, their warriors, or maybe famous ball players (according to one hypothesis, executed ball players)? After all, we sometimes honor athletes more than writers or scientists!

The round faces of the statues look swollen and sometimes resemble the plump faces of children. They have thick, often openly capricious lips, large almond-shaped eyes, a rounded chin, fleshy cheeks and very flat, wide noses. The forehead, often quite high, is hidden under a tightly pulled helmet, the edge of which almost reaches the eyes, and the side plates cover the ears. The back of the head is usually finished very carelessly or not at all. The helmets are only outlined. Apparently, the sculptors paid most attention to the faces of these people, trying to convey their individual features with amazing vividness and realism. Looking at these images, one can seem to recognize the moods and characters of their prototypes. Some look at you in surprise, sometimes outright cheerfully, others are very angry or spiteful.

These heads were cut down in the Las Tuxtlas mountain range and transported 60 to 125 kilometers to the place where they were installed. Their transportation is a brilliant “engineering” solution. According to historians, right in the quarries, blanks for future sculptures were placed on runners and dragged to the nearest river, from where they were floated on large rafts. And right on the spot, where they intended to install the next commemorative head, the craftsmen began to grind this bulk, cutting into it lips, eye sockets, and a thick, flattened nose. Other Olmec monuments, striking in their size, were probably built in exactly the same way.

The skill of the stone cutters is also surprising, because the tools they used to process the basalt blocks were the most primitive: stone chisels, simple drills and sand that replaced sandpaper. The Olmecs had no metal tools and no stone tools harder than basalt!

Who were these “sculptors”? Where did they come from? Why did you take on your hard labor? “These are all questions that, unfortunately, the Olmecs do not want us to answer,” emphasizes German archaeologist Hans Prem. At the time of their appearance in this part of Mexico, the local Indians “led a nomadic lifestyle; New tribal unions constantly arose, and therefore there is no point in talking about the concept of “ethnic group.”

Heyerdahl's predecessors?

When discussing the origin of the Olmecs, scientists have put forward several hypotheses that seem very interesting.

Some historians are looking for the origin of this people on the Pacific coast of Mexico - in the state of Guerrero. But this is the least sensational theory, since it recognizes the Olmecs as actually the original natives of these places.

According to another hypothesis, they came here from the coast of Ecuador, where in 3000-2700 BC one of the oldest ceramic cultures in the New World developed. Perhaps some of the tribes there eventually moved far to the north, to Mexico, wandering along the Isthmus of Panama or moving on ships and boats along the coast.

Finally, the third and, perhaps, the most unexpected hypothesis states that the Olmecs are a people that formed far from the shores of America, somewhere in Africa, Asia (Mongolia, China) or on the islands of Oceania. Evidence in its favor is that the famous stone heads have a certain similarity with Negroids, and with the narrow-eyed inhabitants of East and Southeast Asia, as well as with the Polynesians. These thick-lipped, narrow-eyed sculptures would look just as at home somewhere on the coast of Ghana or southern China. They are in no way similar to the Mayan or Aztec portraits known to us from later wall paintings.

Perhaps it was the Olmec rulers who were the very people (or deities) about whom the myths of the Aztecs and Mayans tell, these “culture heroes” who sailed from across the sea to teach the inhabitants of Mexico everything without which culture is unthinkable, that is, art and craft , the ability to cultivate the land and count the passage of time. So far there is no confirmation of this hypothesis, but it cannot be ruled out, because in recent decades, enthusiasts, starting with Thor Heyerdahl, have proven that on the most primitive boats, people of antiquity could cross the oceans, winning for themselves a place in the sun somewhere “far away, thirty seas." Is this what the Olmec writings say?

Cascajal's puzzling language

In 1999, in the state of Veracruz, while laying a road, a stone slab was accidentally found - the so-called “Cascajal panel” measuring 36 x 21 x 13 centimeters. This slab resembles an A4 sheet cut from stone, only noticeably thicker and weighing about 12 kilograms. According to current ideas, it is not a very suitable thing to write anything on. However, it was she who served the Olmecs as a “notebook.”

In 2006, it was possible to prove that the drawings imprinted on this stone are hieroglyphs (previously, researchers had repeatedly found images of icons left by the Olmecs, but it was not possible to unequivocally confirm that these were written symbols). The slab from Cascajal is a much more compelling argument in favor of the Olmecs’ ability to express thoughts, if not on paper, then on stone tablets. As Mexican archaeologists Carmen Rodriguez Martinez and Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos report in an article published in the journal Science, in this case we are talking specifically about Olmec hieroglyphic writing - the oldest written monument discovered in America. It dates back to around 900 BC.

Among the images painted on the stone are the likenesses of fish, insects, and corn cobs. There are 62 characters in total, some of which are repeated more than once. By all external features, this set of symbols corresponds to written text. All icons are clearly separated from each other and arranged in separate horizontal lines. The division of icons into various groups, each consisting of several symbols, is clearly visible. A certain sequence of characters is repeated several times. According to linguists, this may indicate that we are dealing with a poetic work where there are refrains of individual lines. So this inscription can also be considered the oldest monument poetic art, found in Mesoamerica.

But the meaning of what is written is completely incomprehensible to scientists. So far, deciphering the Olmec inscriptions seems hopeless. After all, even Egyptian hieroglyphs, brought to us by numerous papyri and obelisks, were read only after the Rosetta Stone was found with inscriptions in ancient Greek and two types of ancient Egyptian writing - demotic and hieroglyphic.

Perhaps the Olmec language can be deciphered when new inscriptions are discovered. It is hardly surprising that the only lengthy text left by the Olmecs was on a stone slab. Entire libraries of historical, legal, poetic texts of this lost civilization could have been inscribed on materials of plant origin that had long since decayed in the tropical climate of Mesoamerica. This find, believes the famous German expert on Mayan culture Nikolai Grube, decisively changes our understanding of the Olmec culture: “Now we have the right to believe that writing in Ancient America originated in the Gulf of Mexico region."

So, the first scribes appeared in America around 900 BC at the latest? Until now, scientists believed that this happened four centuries later. In the Old World, namely in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the first written texts date back to the 3rd and even 4th millennia BC. Does this mean that the ancient Americans were far behind in their development from the builders of the first powers of the Ancient East? Maybe we still don’t know much about the archeology of the New World, and somewhere in a remote wilderness the “stone documents” of distant millennia are still waiting to be discovered?

It is curious that the surface of this stone slab is concave, which indicates unique technique inscriptions: the old text was apparently scraped off, and then new characters were cut out on the cleaned surface. Another unexpected discovery!

Neither fathers nor mothers...

Among the whirlwind of tribes that inhabited Ancient Mesoamerica, in a series of their alliances and enmities, the Olmecs appeared “out of the blue,” “like a tornado in the steppe.” Their name - “people of the land of rubber”, however, was invented. It is known that in the Gulf of Mexico region during the time of the Aztecs, that is, shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico, there lived a people who called themselves the Olmecs. It was this name that in the first half of the twentieth century was given to the creators of an unknown Bronze Age culture discovered in Mexico. In fact, there is no evidence that the contemporaries of the Aztecs were descendants of that mysterious people who created the culture that we today call “Olmec” about three thousand years ago. We really don’t know what those ancient people who were awarded the random nickname “Olmecs” called themselves. Modern researchers, by the way, more often use the more correct term “people of the La Venta culture.”

It is not difficult to guess that a strict hierarchy was established in the Olmec society - there is no other way to explain the appearance of these basalt monuments, which required incredible effort. Such sculptures could only be created where a small group of people, constituting the elite, commanded many subjects belonging to the lower caste - the number of workers who could be sent hundreds of kilometers to transport multi-ton blocks of stone. Historians continue to debate who ruled Olmec society—“chiefs,” deified kings, or priest-kings.

They also discuss other aspects of Olmec history and culture. Is it true that they were the progenitors of all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures? As Nikolai Grube aptly notes, “they were neither fathers nor mothers; they were brothers, because chronologically they lived at the same time as some of them.” Of course, the Olmecs are very to a large extent influenced the Mayan world, but, meanwhile, “in the lowlands of Guatemala, the Mayan culture was formed quite independently.”

Did they create their own “empire”? So far we do not have any facts proving the presence of this “superpower of American antiquity” on the world map. US anthropologist Doris Hayden writes in this regard: “Some scientists see in the Olmec phenomenon only artistic style... A good example for comparison would be gothic style, which originated in France and became widespread in other European countries, in Germany, England and Spain, despite the fact that we have no right to talk about a certain “Gothic Empire” that existed in those centuries. We probably also cannot talk about the existence of the Olmec power.”

In turn, other historians, having denied the Olmecs the right to march with fire and sword from Monterrey to San Salvador, like the Assyrians or Aztecs, carefully decorate them with “crowns of roses”, talk about their “amazing peacefulness”, their reluctance to fight and their dislike of weapons, which is also controversial.

The only thing we can say with confidence is that the Olmecs actively developed the lands surrounding the area of ​​their settlement. Archaeologists find their colonies and trading posts far from their ancestral possessions. It is reliably known that the Olmec trade relations extended over more than one and a half thousand kilometers. They traded with distant areas in iron ore, shells, minerals, tortoise shells, stingray bones, jade items and ceramic vessels.

Some researchers do not even exclude the possibility that they could maintain contact with the civilizations of Peru, because there they also revered a deity in the form of a jaguar, whom the Olmecs worshiped. What if they founded their colonies on the coast of Peru?

And now everything is disappearing - both the ancient colonies and the Olmecs themselves...

Geography of flight

At the turn of the 5th - 4th centuries BC, La Venta was destroyed, and the colossal Olmec heads were deliberately damaged.

Historians do not know why the largest Olmec cities died. It appears their population was fleeing for their lives. Perhaps the reason was a war with one of the neighboring cities, which forced the inhabitants of the defeated metropolis to seek salvation. Another probable cause called civil war or an uprising of peasants who refused to obey the elite. Another disaster could be “collapse”: the population of cities increased to such an extent that they could not find food for themselves. Thus, a thousand years later, an economic catastrophe stopped further development Mayan civilization (see “Z-S”, 1/07).

However, the history of the Olmecs is still a different case. It doesn't look like they've exhausted all development resources. And no traces of spontaneous destruction are visible here. The cities were not burned to the ground, nor were they plundered. They were, if such a technical term is appropriate, “systematically dismantled.” The monuments were scraped, hewn, broken into pieces, and then carefully buried in the surrounding hills. There are no known cases in history when invaders or rebellious poor people treated destroyed shrines with such respect.

Perhaps the Olmecs ritually destroyed their religious centers? In later Mesoamerican cultures, it was traditionally believed that every 52 years a certain life cycle. After this, various ceremonies were performed to bring renewal. Perhaps these beliefs go back to Olmec times. And if the rituals did not bring the desired help, and the hardships and troubles only continued to grow, then perhaps frightened people decided to sacrifice the ancient temples and the city in which their ancestors lived for many centuries? What if this was the reason why San Lorenzo and then La Venta were abandoned? After all, these are neither the first nor the last capitals abandoned by their people. Is that here, leaving for new city, the inhabitants of the former capital solemnly buried its very spirit, dismantling worthless shrines and sending them to the kingdom of the dead - burying them in the ground. Now the past could no longer prevent them from building a life in a new place. The gods, who “must have gone crazy” and began to bring only evil instead of good, were sent to that world from which no one had ever returned.

Olmec sculptures

In addition to the colossal heads, almost three hundred more monumental sculptures left by the Olmecs have been discovered. We are talking primarily about the steles they installed everywhere and the giant altars. The largest altar was about four meters long, one and a half meters wide and 1.8 meters high.

In addition, the Olmecs made miniature sculptures from terracotta, obsidian, amethyst and rock crystal, but primarily from jade. The most expressive are the so-called Babyfaces, “baby heads,” or Tigerfaces, “tiger heads.” Even more clearly than the colossal heads, they bear a resemblance to children pouting with anger. Some make terrible faces. Perhaps these portraits are somehow connected with the cult of the jaguar deity? Perhaps the Olmecs considered their rulers to be earthly incarnations of the “Great Jaguar”?

This is also hinted at by the stone altar found at La Venta. In a semicircular niche under the tabletop, a crouched human figure is visible - perhaps a priest - while on the edge of the table is engraved a stylized image of a savagely grinning jaguar.

The wind knows the answer

It seems that archaeologists were able to answer the question of where the Olmecs obtained the jade from which they made their elaborate figurines. As you know, when the Spanish conquistadors conquered America, they looked everywhere for gold and silver, but, to the surprise of the Indians, they remained indifferent to the most valuable thing in the world - “blue jade,” a rare bluish-green variety of this mineral, usually colored in a whitish-green color. The Indians used this mineral at the earliest since 1400 BC. The Olmecs carved human figures and masks out of it, designed to instill horror. But where did they get these valuable stones?

“The wind knows the answer,” it would be fitting for archaeologists to say. When in 1998 Central America Another hurricane hit, leading to numerous landslides. At the same time, whole placers of blue jade were suddenly discovered in some rivers of Guatemala. American archaeologist Russell Seitz, who had been searching for its deposits for decades, was sensitive to this sign and began to examine the banks of streams in the mountainous area in the southeast of Guatemala. There he found what he was looking for: meter-high walls of jade, shimmering in blue and green tones. The archaeologist discovered here abandoned ancient mines and the remains of a road along which the Indians exported valuable raw materials. The location of the mines was kept in the strictest confidence for fear that robbers would penetrate there.

The place where there are writings

Olmec writings were discovered in a quarry near the village of Cascajal ("The place where there is rubble"). Builders have been quarrying stone here for years to pave roads, and archaeologists have been exploring this quarry with the same tenacity in search of ancient artifacts. When workers discovered fragments of pottery and clay figurines here in 1999, the find attracted the attention of archaeologists, and soon an inconspicuous, at first glance, slab covered with ancient hieroglyphs was found in the same area of ​​the quarry.

The history of the Cascajal stone is amazing; some scientists even refuse to believe in the “miraculous salvation” of this slab. “Sensational finds of this kind, completely taken out of the archaeological context, often turned out to be fakes,” admits Hans Prem. - That's why the title of the article in Science is “The Most ancient writing New World" - should at least be accompanied by a question mark."

Olmec stone heads

Olmec Stone Heads - seventeen monumental stone sculptures in the form of human heads, made from large basalt boulders. The age of the sculptures dates back to at least 900 BC. e., and they themselves are considered a distinctive attribute of the ancient Mesoamerican Olmec civilization.

These ancient giant sculptures depict the heads of people with flat noses, slightly slanted eyes and plump cheeks. On at the moment Seventeen mysterious stone heads have been excavated, but no one knows why they are located in one place or another, why they were made and how they were brought to the places where they are now found.

The first archaeological studies of the Olmec civilization date back to 1938. Oddly enough, these expeditions began to take place through quite long time after the discovery of the first giant head in 1862 in Tres Zapotes.

Seventeen giant Olmec stone heads were found in four locations along the Gulf Coast, in places where the Olmec civilization once flourished.

Most Olmec stone heads were carved from round boulders, except for two huge heads from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, which were carved on giant stone thrones. Interestingly, another monument, a massive stone throne located at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala, may have been carved in reverse - from a colossal head.

This monumental throne is the only known example of such carvings that were found in places other than 4 where stone heads were found. The exact age of these colossal heads has not yet been fully established. Scientists have studied four sites where Olmec heads were found - San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes and Rancho la Cobata to get an idea of ​​how they are related.

The monumental heads at San Lorenzo were buried around 900 BC, but there is clear evidence that they were created much earlier. Interestingly, despite the fact that (according to scientists) the heads from San Lorenzo are the oldest of all, they amaze with their perfect carving.

Dating at other excavation sites is more complex - the sculptures at Tres Zapotes were moved from their original site before they were examined by archaeologists, and the heads at La Venta were partially excavated and unearthed when they were discovered. Thus, the actual period of creation of the Olmec giant heads may span either a hundred or a thousand years.

All Olmec stone heads belong to Early Preclassic Mesoamerica (1500 BC - 1000 BC), although two heads at Tres Zapotes and one head from Rancho la Cobata are recognized as dating from the mid-Preclassic period (1000 BC - 400 BC). The Olmec civilization was primarily located on the Gulf Coast, about 275 km along the coast and 100 km inland (there are now two modern mexican states Tabasco and Veracruz.

The Olmec civilization is considered the first "major" culture in Mesoamerica - it existed in this area of ​​Mexico between 1500 BC. and 400 BC As one of the "Six Cradles of Civilization" in the world, the Olmec civilization is the only one that developed in the rainforest. It is believed that the carving and placement of each colossal stone head must have been approved and coordinated by the Olmec rulers.

Construction also had to be carefully planned, taking into account the efforts involved in obtaining the necessary resources and labor. Thus, it seems that only the most powerful Olmecs could afford such a thing. As for labor, not only sculptors were needed, but also boatmen, carpenters, overseers and other artisans who helped create and move the sculpture.

In addition to this, there was also the staff needed to feed all the workers. Seasonal cycles and river levels also had to be taken into account to plan the production of the huge sculptures. In fact, the entire project, from start to finish, could take years. Archaeological examination of Olmec creations suggests exactly how these stone heads were made.

First, the boulders were first roughly processed, breaking off both large and small fragments of rock. Fine carvings were then made using a sculpting hammer. At the final stage, abrasive materials were used for grinding. Olmec stone heads are distinguished by the fact that they usually had carefully carved faces, and were much less meticulous in the details of their headdresses and ear ornaments.

All seventeen stone heads were carved from basalt stone, which was quarried in the Sierra de los Tuxlas mountains in the state of Veracruz. These boulders were found in areas affected by large volcanic landslides, which sent huge boulders down mountain slopes. The Olmecs carefully selected boulders that were originally spherical in shape so that they could more easily be shaped into the appearance of a human head. The boulders were then transported from the mountain slopes to a distance of up to 150 km.

Modern scientists are perplexed how the Olmecs could transport such huge masses of basalt, especially since they did not have draft animals, and this civilization did not use the wheel. Olmec heads range in weight from six to fifty tons, and in height from approximately 1.5 to 3.65 meters. The back of these stone monuments was often made flat.

This has led scientists to speculate that the heads were originally leaned against the wall while the carvers worked. All Olmec giant stone heads have unique headdresses. It is assumed that the Olmecs made (naturally, in life, and not in sculptures) similar headdresses from animal skins or fabric.

Some of the stone heads even show a tied knot at the back of the head, while others have feathered headdresses. Also, most heads have large earrings in their earlobes. All heads are realistic replicas of men. It is likely that they were sculptures of famous Olmec rulers. All 17 stone heads are permanently located in Mexico, mostly in anthropology museums.