This story is often called "Mexican dinotopia" in honor of the well-known Western European TV series, whose heroes live, as they say, side by side with dinosaurs. Indeed, the finds made in this Latin American country testify in favor of the fact that people of antiquity either coexisted with dinosaurs, or were well aware of them.
Archeology at your leisure
Let's start in order. Waldemar Jalsrud was a native of Germany who moved to distant Mexico at the end of the 19th century. He settled in the small town of Acambaro, which is 300 kilometers north of Mexico City. There he started his own business, a hardware business, which brought him a decent income. Waldemar devoted his leisure time to archeology. In the early twenties of the XX century, together with Padre Martinez, he excavated the monuments of the Chupicauro culture eight miles from El Toro Hill. But the most interesting event in his life happened twenty years later.
In July 1944, early in the morning, Jalsrud was making a horse ride along the slopes of El Toro Hill and suddenly saw several hewn stones and pottery fragments protruding from the soil. After examining the strange finds, he came to the conclusion that they could not be attributed to any archaeological culture known at that time.
The hardware dealer decided to start his own archaeological survey. He hired a local peasant named Odilon Tinajero, promising to pay him one peso for each artifact. Therefore, Tinajero was extremely careful when excavating, and accidentally stuck objects broken before taking them to the employer. This is how the famous Jalsrud collection began to form, which was later replenished by the son of Valdemar, Carlos Jalsrud, and then by the grandson, Carlos II.
Carlos Jalsrud at the grave of fathers - Valdemar Jalsrud.
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Jalsrud Collection
Ultimately, the collection began to number about 35 thousand artifacts. These are mainly clay figurines. The second category is stone sculptures. The third is ceramics. The most interesting fact was that there was not a single duplicate specimen of sculpture in the entire collection. The sizes of the figures are from ten centimeters to one meter in height and one and a half in length. In addition, the collection contains musical instruments, masks, and working instruments made of obsidian and jade found there. Along with the artifacts, several human skulls, the skeleton of a mammoth and the teeth of an Ice Age horse were found during excavations.
View of the El Toro hill.
In the Jalsrud collection there were many anthropomorphic figurines representing an almost complete set of racial types of humanity - Mongoloids, Negroids, Caucasoids, Polynesian type and others. But this was not the main sensation. The most mysterious thing was that about 2,600 figurines were images of dinosaurs! Moreover, the variety of types of fossil lizards is striking. Among them there are species well known to paleontological science: Brachiosaurus, Iguanodon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pteranodon, Ankylosaurus, Plesiosaurus and many others. There are a huge number of figurines that modern scientists cannot identify, including the winged "dragon dinosaurs". But the most striking thing is that the collection contains a significant number of images of humans alongside dinosaurs. Also in the collection there are now extinct mammals - the American camel and the Ice Age horse, giant Pleistocene monkeys and others.
A breach in the conspiracy of silence
Recognition for the collection came with great difficulty. In 1950, the American journalist Lowell Harmer came to Acambaro. He was present at the excavations on the El Toro Hill and even photographed Jalsrud with the newly dug dinosaur figurines. Following him, Los Angeles journalist William Russell published a photo report on the Jalsrud excavation. In his publication, Russell indicated that the artifacts were removed from a depth of 5-6 feet (one and a half meters), and many objects were entwined with plant roots, so he had no doubts about the authenticity of the finds. These publications played a role in popularizing the Waldemar Jalsrud collection and breached a conspiracy of silence among academic scholars.
The thesis of forgeries in 1952 was officially denied by the Mexican authorities. Then the superintendent of the National Irrigation Institute Francisco Sanchez said that he can unequivocally state the absence of any ceramic production in Acambaro. The mayor of the city, Juan Carranza, also published an official statement, which said that as a result of a special investigation, it turned out that there was not a single person in the city and its environs who would be engaged in the production of such products. History professor Ramon Rivera interviewed local elders and learned that in the previous hundred years, nothing like a large-scale ceramic production had ever appeared in the Acambaro area. However, it is clear to anyone that no one will make thousands of figurines and bury them in the ground in order to play a trick on the public.
Scientists are cunning
By 1954, criticism of the Jalsrud collection, initiated by ill-wishers, reached its maximum, and this led to the fact that official science finally showed interest in it. A delegation of scientists headed by the director of the Department of Pre-Hispanic Monuments of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Dr. Eduardo Nokvera went to Acambaro. In addition to him, the group included three more anthropologists and historians. This delegation selected the site itself for the control excavation on the hillside. They took place in the presence of reputable local citizens. Literally after several hours of work, statuettes similar to those from the Jalsrud collection were found. The found artifacts were considered ancient. The team members congratulated Jalsrud on the outstanding discovery and two of them promised to publish the results of the trip in scientific journals. However, three weeks have passedand upon his return to Mexico City, Dr. Noquera submitted a report claiming that the Jalsrud collection was falsified as it contained dinosaur figurines.
Tunnels and tomb
In the future, there were always those who wanted to "expose" the collection. Meanwhile, experts from the United States dated the figurines from two to five thousand years old. The collection contains a large number of stone figures, and all of them show signs of severe erosion. It is almost impossible to forge such an element of the surface of an object, it has been arising over the course of centuries. It turned out that the Indians considered the hill of El Toro sacred since ancient times. Now the locals claim that there are four tunnels that lead into the depths of the hill. An underground city of some ancient civilization seems to be hiding there. But the natives diligently hide the entrances to these tunnels, because they are afraid that their native places will become the subject of intrusive interest. And the American John Tierney, who studied materials from Acambaro for almost forty years, is convinced that the collection gathered by Jalsrud is part of a huge "library"accompanying the tomb. He believes that the main component of the El Toro monument should be burial.
By the way, back in 1945, the director for archeology of the Acambaro zone at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, Carlos Perez, said that the objects in Jalsrud's collection did not raise doubts about their authenticity. Moreover, he personally had the opportunity to study dinosaur figurines found in other areas of Mexico. In 1978, the federal police confiscated 3,300 statuettes similar to those found by Jalsrud from two antiquity hunters. Among them were nine dinosaur figures. But they were all found on the El Chivo hill. also located near Acambaro.
Members of the delegation at the entrance to the Acambaro Museum.
To argue that the Indians of Mesoamerica lived side by side with dinosaurs would still be somewhat rash. It is more logical to assume the following. Archeology is hardly an occupation that only our contemporaries do. They were very fond of digging ancient Roman and Etruscan antiquities from the ground in medieval Italy. It is known that the subjects of the Egyptian pharaohs were engaged in similar searches in the thickness of the sand. It is possible that their contemporaries in Mexico could even study paleontology and be very successful in this. So much so that pupils in schools in the classroom sculpted dinosaur figures out of clay, sometimes fantasizing and depicting fossil lizards together with people. When a certain ruler patronizing knowledge died, thousands and thousands of clay figurines were placed in his burial, among which were clay dinosaurs …Golden Series"