HOW to Interpret Olmec Civilization: Afro-Mexicans, their DNA, and Great Stone Faces

TO make the history and culture of America, including Mexican history fairly straightforward to analyse, it is divided into eras - Columbian and Pre-Columbian, effectively pre- and post 1492. According to a new school of thought, Columbus,in fact discovered America in 1485, during a secret expedition financed by the Medicis. But regardless of the precise date of his arrival, he was preceded by a people described variously as african-mexican or mexican-african, depending on the aspect of their ethnicity that needed to be emphasized. Thus, if we include the history of afro-mexicans in the history of afro-america we should discover that Africans had arrived in the middle of the continent long before the beginning of the triangular trade.

SAN LORENZO, the ancient Olmec cultural centre in the Mexican state of Veracruz was already in decline by 900 BCE, more than 2000 years before Columbus 'discovered' America. But who exactly were the Olmecs? In the history of Mexico, they are described as 'a fascinating people' or as 'the first major pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico.' However all this achieves is to fuel speculation. Instead, let us examine the evidence.

Whatever the case may be, judging from their gigantic basalt figures of African faces, their history very closely reflects that of black Mexicans in the ancient history of Mexico.

Colossal Heads

THESE figures have prominent African features including on ocassion, tribal markings. But whom do they represent? The fact that the bodies have not been depicted encourages the conclusion that the most important aspects of these people were to be found on their faces. Except for differences in height, all humans are alike. Was the Olmec civilization started by the people represented in these statues, and was the history of the Olmecs the same as that of the earliest African Mexicans?

Further research will be helpful, but the evidence from several sites in Mexico have also unearthed skeletal remains of Africans.

SOME of these statues are more than 9 feet high and 30 feet in circumference, and weigh more than 20 tons. They are most prominently displayed in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, the collective name for three sites (San Lorenzo, Tenochtitlán, and Portrero Nuevo) in south-eastern Vera Cruz, where then displays include items closely resembling African art masks.

IF the evidence carved from the local stone is circumstantial, the DNA evidence is perhaps even more persuasive regarding the history of black Mexicans in Mexico. Even without emphasizing the linguistic commonalities between certain Senegalese languages and those of the Yucatan and other regions of Meso-America into which the Olmecs tribes would have migrated, the DNA evidence should prove quite informative. This approach will prove extremely useful in supplementing the proof offered by the Great Stone Faces, since there is documented proof of the negro origins of several otherwise completely white families in the north of England.

Outside West Africa, some genetic diseases endemic to that area are found in former Olmec tribes and almost nowhere else

Genetic Evidence

AFRICAN GENES occur extensively in the ancient Mexican history. They are present in Mexican tribes in the following proprtions: Paraiso-21.7%, El Carmen-28.4%, Veracruz-25.6%, Sandero-30.26%, and Taminahua, 40.26%. It follows from the nature of Statistical Analysis, that this DNA evidence will be found in Afro-Mexicans throughout the population although with the passage of tine its will regress to a level at which it ceases to be significant.

Senegalese trader-warriors had made the crossing West Africa to the Mexican coastline with the aid of the Canaries Current, the very ocean-current on which Christopher Columbus had drifted, until eventually he made landfall in the New World, and encountered African Mexicans.

IT is ocassionally claimed that the Colossal Heads were executed in Olmec culture to celebrate their African slaves. Without pursuing the question of the number of transatlantic slave-raiding expeditions that would have been required, to obtain a number of Afro-mexican slaves large enough to interact with the indigenous populations and leave statistically significant DNA evidence; it is not difficult to imagine that in a couple of thousand years, the Great Stone Faces carved into Mount Rushmore would be taken to represent, not great American Presidents, but prominent American slaves. Such is the price we pay for History.

Resources

1. Lister et al., Genetic Structure in America [in] 'Human Biology' June 1996.
2. Ivan Van Sertima, They came before Columbus. Random House, 1976
3. getty images
4. http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Lorenzo_Tenochtitl%C3%A1n