The Olmec civilization is considered the first, "mother" civilization of Mexico. Like all other first civilizations, it emerges immediately and in a “ready-made form”: with a developed hieroglyphic writing, an accurate calendar, canonized art, and a developed architecture. According to the views 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 cultural influence of the Olmecs can be traced throughout Central Mexico. Until now, nothing is known about the people who created this first Mexican civilization. The name "Olmecs" meaning "rubber people" is given by modern scientists. But where did this people come from, what language they spoke,where did he disappear after centuries - all these main questions remain unanswered after more than half a century of studies of the Olmec culture.
The largest monuments of the Olmecs 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 have achieved real excellence in stone processing, including very hard rocks. Olmec jade products are considered to be masterpieces of ancient American art. The monumental sculpture of the Olmecs included multi-tone altars made of granite and basalt, carved steles, sculptures of human height. But one of the most remarkable and mysterious features of this civilization is 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 the 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!
All heads are made in the same stylistic manner, but it is obvious that each of them is a portrait of a particular 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 elaborate ears decorated with large earrings or ear inserts. Earlobe piercing was a common tradition in all ancient cultures of Mexico. One of the heads, the largest one from Rancho la Cobata, depicts a man with closed eyes, all the other sixteen heads have eyes wide open. Those. each such sculpture was supposed to depict a specific person with a characteristic set of individual features. We can say that Olmec heads are images of specific people. But despite the individuality of the traits, all the giant heads of the Olmecs are united by one common and mysterious feature. The portraits of the people depicted in these sculptures have pronounced negroid features: a wide, flattened nose with large nostrils, full lips and large eyes. Such features do not fit in any way with the main anthropological type of the ancient population of Mexico. Olmec art, be it sculpture, relief or small plastic, in most cases reflects the typical American Indian appearance characteristic of the American race. But not on giant heads. This negroidity of features was noted by the first researchers from the very beginning. This led to the emergence of various hypotheses: from assumptions about the migration of immigrants from Africa to claims that this racial type was characteristic of the ancient inhabitants of Southeast Asia,who were part of the first settlers to America. However, this problem was quickly "let down on the brakes" by representatives of official science. It was too inconvenient to think that any contacts could exist between America and Africa at the very dawn of civilization. The official theory did not imply them. And if so, then Olmec heads are images of local rulers, after whose death such original memorial monuments were made. But the Olmec heads are truly a unique phenomenon for ancient America. In the Olmec culture itself, there are still similar analogies, i.e. sculpted human heads. But unlike 17 "black" heads, they depict portraits of people of a typical American race, are smaller and made in accordance with a completely different pictorial canon. In other cultures of ancient Mexico, there is nothing like this. In addition, you 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 what about the problem of negroid traits? Whatever theories prevailing in historical science assert, besides them there are also facts. An Olmec vessel in the form of a seated elephant is kept in the Anthropological Museum of Xalapa (Veracruz State). It is considered proven that elephants in America disappeared with the end of the last glaciation, i.e. about 12 thousand years ago. But the Olmecs knew the elephant so much that it was even depicted in figured ceramics. Either elephants still lived in the Olmec era, which contradicts the data of paleozoology, or the Olmec masters 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 absurd "trifles". Besides,in the last century in different regions of Mexico, and on the monuments with traces of the influence of the Olmec civilization (Monte Alban, Tlatilco) burials were discovered, the skeletons in which anthropologists identified as belonging to the Negroid race.
The giant Olmec heads are asking researchers a lot of paradoxical questions. One of the heads from San Lorenzo has an inner tube connecting the ear and mouth of the sculpture. How in a monolithic basalt block with a height of 2.7 m was it possible to make such a complex internal channel using primitive (not even metal) tools? Geologists who have studied the Olmec heads have found that the basalt from which the heads were made at La Venta came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, which, if measured in a straight line, are 90 kilometers. How the ancient Indians, who did not even know the wheels, transported monolithic boulders weighing 10-20 tons over rough terrain. American archaeologists believe that the Olmecs could have used reed rafts, which, together with their cargo, were floated down the river to the Gulf of Mexico,and already along the coast they delivered basalt blocks to their city centers. But the distance from the Tuxtla quarries to the nearest river is about 40 km, and it is a dense swampy jungle.
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In some myths about the creation of the world that have come down to our days from various Mexican peoples, the emergence of the first cities is associated with newcomers from the north. According to one version, they sailed by boats from the north and landed at the Panuco River, then walked along the coast to the Potonchan at the mouth of Jalisco (the oldest Olmec center of La Venta is located in this area). Here the aliens exterminated the local giants and founded the first Tamoanchan cultural center mentioned in the legends.
According to another myth, seven tribes came from the north to the Mexican Highlands. Two peoples already lived here - Chichimecs and giants. Moreover, the giants inhabited the land to the east of modern Mexico City - the Puebla and Cholula regions. Both peoples led a barbaric lifestyle, hunted for food and ate raw meat. Aliens from the north drove out the Chichemeks and exterminated the giants. Thus, according to the mythology of a number of Mexican peoples, the 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.
Mentions of the race of ancient giants that preceded the historical peoples are found in many Mexican myths. So the Aztecs believed that the earth was inhabited by giants during the era of the First Sun. They called the ancient giants "kiname" or "kinametine". The Spanish chronicler Bernardo de Sahagun identified these ancient giants with the Toltecs and believed that it was they who erected the giant pyramids at Teotehuacan and Cholula.
Bernal Diaz, a member of the Cortez expedition, wrote in his book "The Conquest of New Spain" that after the conquistadors had established a foothold in the city of Tlaxcale (east of Mexico City, Puebla region), the local Indians told them that in very ancient times people settled in this area enormous growth and strength. But because they had a bad character and bad customs, the Indians exterminated them. In support of their words, the inhabitants of Tlaxcala showed the Spaniards the bone of an ancient giant. Diaz writes that it was a femur and its length was equal to the growth of Diaz himself. Those. the growth of these giants was more than three times the height of an ordinary person.
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 coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It is quite legitimate to assume that the giant heads of the Olmecs symbolized the victory over the race of giants and that 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 giant Olmec heads have individual facial features?
Maybe those researchers who believe that giant heads were portraits of rulers are right? But the study of paradoxical phenomena is always complicated by the fact that such historical phenomena rarely fit into the system of familiar 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 that time could be transformed several times. The image of the giants could be perverted to please the victors. Why not admit that the giants were the rulers of the Olmec cities for a time? And why not assume also that this ancient people of giants belonged to the Negroid race?
The ancient Ossetian epic "Legends of the Narts" is all imbued with the theme of the struggle between the Narts and the giants. They were called waigi. But, what is most interesting, they were called black waigs. And although the epic never mentions the skin color of the Caucasian giants, the adjective “black”, in relation to the waig, 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 of distant eras is too scarce.
It remains only to recall the great poet A. S. Pushkin, who used the rich heritage of Russian folklore in his work. In Ruslana and Lyudmila, the protagonist encounters a giant's head, standing alone in an open field, and defeats it. The same theme of the victory over the ancient giants and the same image of a giant head. And such a coincidence cannot be a mere coincidence.
"World through the looking glass", N 12, ANDREY ZHUKOV