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Dr. Wiercinski (1972) claims that the some of the Olmecs were of African origin. He supports this claim with skeletal evidence from several Olmec sites where he found skeletons that were analogous to the West African type black. Wiercinski discovered that 13.5 percent of the skeletons from Tlatilco and 4.5 percent of the skeletons from Cerro de las Mesas were Africoid (Rensberger,1988; Wiercinski, 1972; Wiercinski & Jairazbhoy 1975).
Diehl and Coe (1995, 12) of Harvard University have made it clear that until a skeleton of an African is found on an Olmec site he will not accept the art evidence that the were Africans among the Olmecs. This is rather surprising because Constance Irwin and Dr. Wiercinski (1972) have both reported that skeletal remains of Africans have been found in Mexico. Constance Irwin, in Fair Gods and Stone Faces, says that anthropologist see "distinct signs of Negroid ancestry in many a New World skull...."
Dr. Wiercinski (1972) claims that some of the Olmecs were of African origin. He supports this claim with skeletal evidence from several Olmec sites where he found skeletons that were analogous to the West African type black. Many Olmec skulls show cranial deformations (Pailles, 1980), yet Wiercinski (1972b) was able to determine the ethnic origins of the Olmecs. Marquez (1956, 179-80) made it clear that a common trait of the African skulls found in Mexico include marked prognathousness ,prominent cheek bones are also mentioned. Fronto-occipital deformation among the Olmec is not surprising because cranial deformations was common among the Mande speaking people until fairly recently (Desplanges, 1906).
To determine the racial heritage of the ancient Olmecs, Dr. Wiercinski (1972b) used classic diagnostic traits determined by craniometric and cranioscopic methods. These measurements were then compared to a series of three crania sets from Poland, Mongolia and Uganda to represent the three racial categories of mankind. In Table 1, we have the racial composition of the Olmec skulls. The only European type recorded in this table is the Alpine group which represents only 1.9 percent of the crania from Tlatilco.
The other alleged "white" crania from Wiercinski's typology of Olmec crania, represent the Dongolan (19.2 percent), Armenoid (7.7 percent), Armenoid-Bushman (3.9 percent) and Anatolian (3.9 percent). The Dongolan, Anatolian and Armenoid terms are euphemisms for the so-called "Brown Race" "Dynastic Race", "Hamitic Race",and etc., which racist Europeans claimed were the founders of civilization in Africa.
In Table 2, we record the racial composition of the Olmec according to the Wiercinski (1972b) study. The races recorded in this table are based on the Polish Comparative-Morphological School (PCMS). The PCMS terms are misleading. As mentioned earlier the Dongolan , Armenoid, and Equatorial groups refer to African people with varying facial features which are all Blacks. This is obvious when we look at the iconographic and sculptural evidence used by Wiercinski (1972b) to support his conclusions.
Wiercinski (1972b) compared the physiognomy of the Olmecs to corresponding examples of Olmec sculptures and bas-reliefs on the stelas. For example, Wiercinski (1972b, p.160) makes it clear that the clossal Olmec heads represent the Dongolan type. It is interesting to note that the emperical frequencies of the Dongolan type at Tlatilco is .231, this was more than twice as high as Wiercinski's theorectical figure of .101, for the presence of Dongolans at Tlatilco.
The other possible African type found at Tlatilco and Cerro were the Laponoid group. The Laponoid group represents the Austroloid-Melanesian type of (Negro) Pacific Islander, not the Mongolian type. If we add together the following percent of the Olmecs represented in Table 2, by the Laponoid (21.2%), Equatorial (13.5), and Armenoid (18.3) groups we can assume that at least 53 percent of the Olmecs at Tlatilco were Africans or Blacks. Using the same figures recorded in Table 2 for Cerro,we observe that 40.8 percent of these Olmecs would have been classified as Black if they lived in contemporary America.
Rossum (1996) has criticied the work of Wiercinski because he found that not only blacks, but whites were also present in ancient America. To support this view he (1) claims that Wiercinski was wrong because he found that Negro/Black people lived in Shang China, and 2) that he compared ancient skeletons to modern Old World people.
First, it was not surprising that Wiercinski found affinities between African and ancient Chinese populations, because everyone knows that many Negro/African /Oceanic skeletons (referred to as Loponoid by the Polish school) have been found in ancient China see: Kwang-chih Chang The Archaeology of ancient China (1976,1977, p.76,1987, pp.64,68). These Blacks were spread throughout Kwangsi, Kwantung, Szechwan, Yunnan and Pearl River delta.
Skeletons from Liu-Chiang and Dawenkou, early Neolithic sites found in China, were also Negro. Moreover, the Dawenkou skeletons show skull deformation and extraction of teeth customs, analogous to customs among Blacks in Polynesia and Africa.
Secondly, Rossum argues that Wiercinski was wrong about Blacks in ancient America because a comparison of modern native American skeletal material and the ancient Olmec skeletal material indicate no admixture. The study of Vargas and Rossum are flawed. They are flawed because the skeletal reference collection they used in their comparison of Olmec skeletal remains and modern Amerindian propulations because the Mexicans have been mixing with African and European populations since the 1500's. This has left many components of these Old World people within and among Mexican Amerindians.
The iconography of the classic Olmec and Mayan civilization show no correspondence in facial features. But many contemporary Maya and other Amerind groups show African characteristics and DNA. Underhill, et al (1996) found that the Mayan people have an African Y chromosome. This would explain the "puffy" faces of contemporary Amerinds, which are incongruent with the Mayan type associated with classic Mayan sculptures and stelas.
Wiercinski on the otherhand, compared his SRC to an unmixed European and African sample. This comparison avoided the use of skeletal material that is clearly mixed with Africans and Europeans, in much the same way as the Afro-American people he discussed in his essay who have acquired "white" features since mixing with whites due to the slave trade.
A. von Wuthenau (1980), and Wiercinski (1972b) highlight the numerous art pieces depicting the African or Black variety which made up the Olmec people. This re-anlysis of the Olmec skeletal meterial from Tlatilco and Cerro, which correctly identifies Armenoid, Dongolan and Loponoid as euphmisms for "Negro" make it clear that a substantial number of the Olmecs were Blacks support the art evidence and writing which point to an African origin for Olmec civilization.
In conclusion, the Olmec people were called Xi. They did not speak a Mixe-Zoque language they spoke a Mande language, which is the substratum language for many Mexican languages.
The Olmec came from Saharan Africa 3200 years ago.They came in boats which are depicted in the Izapa Stela no.5, in twelve migratory waves. These Proto-Olmecs belonged to seven clans which served as the base for the Olmec people.
Physical anthropologist use many terms to refer to the African type represented by Olmec skeletal remains including Armenoid, Dongolan, Loponoid and Equatorial. The evidence of African skeletons found at many Olmec sites, and their trading partners from the Old World found by Dr. Andrzej Wiercinski prove the cosmopolitan nature of Olmec society. This skeletal evidence explains the discovery of many African tribes in Mexico and Central America when Columbus discovered the Americas (de Quatrefages, 1836).
The skeletal material from Tlatilco and Cerro de las Mesas and evidence that the Olmecs used an African writing to inscribe their monuments and artifacts, make it clear that Africans were a predominant part of the Olmec population. These Olmecs constructed complex pyramids and large sculptured monuments weighing tons. The Maya during the Pre-Classic period built pyramids over the Olmec pyramids to disguise the Olmec origin of these pyramids.
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A 2,700-year-old pyramid tomb excavated in the western Chiapas state of Mexico, and the monumental center in which it was discovered, is shedding new light on the possible origins or connections it may have to a well-known ancient Olmec capital to its east on the Mexican Gulf Coast. The discovery presents a tantalizing new piece in the emerging picture of state formation in southern Mexico and of a people and civilization that may have had trade and cultural affiliations with La Venta and possibly other Olmec centers from 1,000 to 400 B.C.
Known as Chiapa de Corzo, the site was excavated in 2010 by archaeologist Bruce Bachand of Brigham Young University's New World Archaeological Foundation, along with Emiliano Gallaga of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History and Lynneth Lowe of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The tomb contained two regally adorned individuals, one an adult male and the other an adult female. Given the nature of the burial and finds, they had clearly uncovered a royal tomb, a tomb that predated by 600 years any other such tomb found in Mesoamerica, including that of the familiar ancient Maya sites at Tikal and Kaminaljuyu.
"The main occupants were likely a conjugal pair that governed Chiapa de Corzo and the surounding countryside," says Bachand. "The tomb exhibits Olmec rather than Maya affinities. Jade beads fashioned into duck heads, clamshells, pumpkin-shaped gourds, and bamboo shoots are similar to artifacts excavated seventy years ago at the mammoth Gulf Olmec site of La Venta. Green and gray obsidian disks - eye pieces for wooden or textile masks now long decayed - are also similar to pairs of disks found in a tomb and offering at La Venta".
Similarities notwithstanding, the site also exhibited characteristics unique to its particular culture. Says Bachand, "when objects like these are discovered it is easy to overlook or downplay what is unique or distinct about the context. The absence of large jade earspools on the heads of the deceased (a signature Olmec trait), and the placement of clamshells over their mouths (a practice that continued for centuries in Chiapas), appear to be expressions of local identity and belief. Strontium isotope ratios obtained from human bone will hopefully tell us which region these individuals resided in as youths, providing yet another angle on the many-sided matter of their social identities."
Equally significant was the discovery of several offering pits near the pyramid tomb, containing artifacts identified as ritual stone axes, greenstone axes, a serpentine axe with an engraved image of an Olmec deity, and an elaborate sacrificial burial. The artifacts and burial, the alignment of the pits with the pyramidal tomb, and the nature and arrangement of subsequent deposits and monumental structures throughout the site of Chiapa de Corzo suggest that it was a center of continuous ritual activity. Moreover, the size, shape and arrangement of certain central mounds at the site, which includes the tomb mound, resemble the familiar "E-Group" formations found at other Chiapas region sites dated to 900 - 800 B.C., 200 years before it appeared in the later Maya sites. Analysis of findings at the pyramidal tomb mound indicate an association between the "E-Group" configuration and human sacrifice, rulership, the cardinal directions, lighting, corn, and community ritual, all related to Olmec views of the supernatural.
The excavations at Chiapa de Corzo have raised perhaps more questions than answers, but ongoing investigations and research continue to open the door on who these people were and what connections they had with other civilizations and centers of Mesoamerica.
To be sure, some elements of the larger picture have already come into focus. Reports Bachand: "The last twenty years of archaeological and linguistic research have demonstrated that Chiapa de Corzo and west-central Chiapas were home to the Zoque, descendants of the Mixe-zoque speaking Olmec who inhabited the Gulf and Pacific coasts of southern Mexico during the Early Formative Period (1500 - 1000 B.C.). Recognizing ancient Chiapa de Corzans as Zoque has ramifications for understanding the ethnic composition of Middle Formative (1000 - 400 B.C.) Gulf Olmec centers such as La Venta........the two centers shared a common Early Formative Mixe-zoque heritage."
Were the two centers closely related and representative of the same population and culture? According to Bachand, the jury is still out on this question.
"It would be rash to envision La Venta or Chiapa de Corzo as immiscible entities; La Venta was surely the more cosmopolitan of the two. But if one culture can be pegged for playing a dominant role in La Venta's florescence, it would have to be the Zoque, considering the many ties seen in architecture, site planning, and sumptuary items across the two regions."
The detailed article about the tomb and other related discoveries at Chiapa de Corzo can be found in the June issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine. .
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