posted
The same team who a couple of years ago made a reconstruction of an Olmec face based of one of the famous Olmec colossal stone heads, has made a new reconstruction of ancient Olmecs. This time they based it on a couple of twin statues. The reconstructions in both cases were made with the aid of an artificial intelligence. The reconstructions show that the Olmec artworks did not depict neither Africans or aliens, but Native Indigenous Americans.
What the world waits for now is a facial forensic reconstruction based on an actual Olmec skull.
The first reconstruction
An Olmec stone head and a modern Native Indigenous American
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ So you mean negroid features does not mean negro?? LOL So what about caucasoid features?
It is rather hard to consider this man a "negro" even if he have thick lips and broad nose. He looks rather similar to some of the stone heads. But of course the stone heads are just a part of all the Olmec artworks which has been found.
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What the world waits for now is a facial forensic reconstruction based on an actual Olmec skull.
skin color and hair type of it would be speculation
Hopefully we will get more Olmec remains to analyze, and also if we get some full genomes that can assist in getting a more detailed picture of the phenotype and other traits of the Olmecs.
Their art is rather diverse, but one can probably get some glimpses of how they looked like by it, and draw some conclusions like in the above mentioned videos.
Here are just a couple of other examples of Olmec artwork:
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posted
On some of the Olmec artwork hair and hairstyles can be seen. Also judging from geographic region, and the Olmecs relatedness to other peoples in the area one would expect straight hair.
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posted
Some of the artwork have sometimes led to rather wild speculations about which kind of people the Olmecs were, and often people have cherry picked some special artworks or other artifacts which fueled the speculations. Today though those archaeologists and anthropologists who do research on the Olmecs consider it an Indigenous American civilisation populated by Native Indigenous Americans and not by foreigners from beyond the seas.
Wiki has a page about some of the speculations that surrounded the Olmec culture.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ So you mean negroid features does not mean negro?? LOL So what about caucasoid features?
It is rather hard to consider this man a "negro" even if he have thick lips and broad nose. He looks rather similar to some of the stone heads. But of course the stone heads are just a part of all the Olmec artworks which has been found.
Here is a recent video about the olmecs. Of course it's pseudoscience etc..
The Olmecs Were Black With Out A Doubt!
quote: The Olmecs were a Black civilization here in the Americans, in fact they were the very first civilization in America. They left countless artifacts which indicate who they were and no matter what you have been taught or how they are portrayed. They were in deed Black people. Remember folks. Black people come from everywhere.
posted
A good and balanced picture of the Olmec culture and its importance for later Mesoamerican cultures can be found in this interesting video from the YouTube channel Ancient Americas. It tells about the Olmecs in an easy-to-understand way and also addresses some of the pseudo-theories that have surrounded them since their culture (and above all the giant stone heads) were discovered.
And as mentioned before it seems that Black Americans are not the only foreigners who have claimed the Olmec culture in one or another way. There have been speculations about ancient Chinese, Phoenicians, Hebrew, Europeans (even Nordics) and Hindu origins or influence. Seems many want a part of the Olmec cake
The Olmec speculations are also a part of a bigger pattern of different people from the "Old World" (or with their roots there) who claim that their ancestors visited, colonized or even, in some cases, were first in the New World
posted
Thanks for the informative posts. The whackjobs following frauds like Van Sertima would do better writing (probably pretty bad) science fiction. "It is now believed that the recently discovered "pre- Chavin" civilizations of coastal and Andean Peru predate the beginnings of Olmec civilization by as much as 1300 or 1500 years. However, despite evidence to the contrary, the Afrocentrists continue to promote their Mexican contact theory and their belief in the "primacy" of a "black" or mixed (Black- Indian) Olmec civilization. The purpose behind this hypothesis seems to be the promotion of a strong, dominant "black" and civilizing Egypt and Nubia which can appeal to African Americans and engender racial pride as a kind of antidote to modern Eurocentric hegemonism at all levels of North American society. In the process, they belittle and denigrate Native American civilizations just as 19th century Eurocentrists belittled and denigrated African civilizations." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270095011_They_Were_NOT_Here_before_Columbus_Afrocentric_Hyperdiffusionism_in_the_1990s/link/55e9d7b308ae21d099c41024/download
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: A good and balanced picture of the Olmec culture and its importance for later Mesoamerican cultures can be found in this interesting video from the YouTube channel Ancient Americas. It tells about the Olmecs in an easy-to-understand way and also addresses some of the pseudo-theories that have surrounded them since their culture (and above all the giant stone heads) were discovered.
And as mentioned before it seems that Black Americans are not the only foreigners who have claimed the Olmec culture in one or another way. There have been speculations about ancient Chinese, Phoenicians, Hebrew, Europeans (even Nordics) and Hindu origins or influence. Seems many want a part of the Olmec cake
The Olmec speculations are also a part of a bigger pattern of different people from the "Old World" (or with their roots there) who claim that their ancestors visited, colonized or even, in some cases, were first in the New World
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