Giant Olmec heads. Olmec stone heads: mysteries of a lost civilization

Almanac "WORLD OF WONDERS"

Olmec stone heads

About three thousand years ago, an Indian culture arose on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, called Olmec. This conventional name was given by the name of the Olmecs, a small group of Indian tribes who lived in this territory much later, in the 11th-14th centuries. The very name "Olmec", which means "rubber people", is of Aztec origin. The Aztecs named them after the area on the Gulf Coast where rubber was produced and where the contemporary Olmecs lived. So the Olmecs themselves and the Olmec culture are not at all the same thing. This circumstance is extremely difficult to understand for non-specialists like G. Hancock, who devoted many pages to the Olmecs in his book “Traces of the Gods.” Such publications only confuse the problem, while at the same time explaining nothing of the essence of the matter.

The ancient Olmec civilization, which dates back to the second millennium BC. e., ceased to exist in the first years of our era and one and a half thousand years before the heyday of the Aztec empire. The Olmec culture is sometimes called the "mother of cultures" of Central America and the earliest civilization of Mexico.

Oddly enough, despite all the efforts of archaeologists, nowhere in Mexico, as well as in America in general, have so far been able to discover any traces of the origin and evolution of the Olmec civilization, the stages of its development, the place of its origin, as if this people appeared as already laid down. Absolutely nothing is known about the social organization of the Olmecs, nor about their beliefs and rituals - except for human sacrifice. We do not know what language the Olmecs spoke or what ethnic group they belonged to. And the extremely high humidity in the Gulf of Mexico area meant that not a single Olmec skeleton survived.

The culture of the ancient Olmecs was the same “corn civilization” as the rest of the pre-Columbian cultures of America. The main sectors of the economy were agriculture and fishing. The remains of religious buildings of this civilization - pyramids, platforms, statues - have survived to this day. The ancient Olmecs cut down stone blocks and carved massive sculptures from them. Some of them depict huge heads, known today as "Olmec heads." These stone heads are the biggest mystery of ancient civilization...

Monumental sculptures weighing up to 30 tons depict the heads of people with unmistakably Negroid facial features. These are almost portrait images of Africans in tight-fitting helmets with a chin strap. The earlobes are pierced. The face is carved with deep wrinkles on both sides of the nose. The corners of the thick lips are curved down.

Despite the fact that the Olmec culture flourished in 1500-1000 BC. e., there is no certainty that the heads were carved precisely in this era, since radiocarbon dating of pieces of coal found nearby gives only the age of the coals themselves. Perhaps the stone heads are much younger.

The first stone head was discovered in the 1930s by American archaeologist Matthew Stirling. He wrote in his report: “The head was carved from a separate massive basalt block. It rested on a foundation of unprocessed stone blocks. Being cleared of the ground, the head had a rather terrifying appearance. Despite its considerable size, it was processed very carefully and confidently, its proportions "ideal. A unique phenomenon among the sculptures of the aborigines of America, it is remarkable for its realism. Its features are distinct and clearly of the Negro type."

By the way, Stirling made another discovery - he discovered children's toys in the form of dogs on wheels. This seemingly innocent find was actually a sensation - after all, it was believed that the civilizations of pre-Columbian America did not know wheels. But it turns out that this rule does not apply to the ancient Olmecs...

However, it soon turned out that the Mayan Indians, the southern contemporaries of the ancient Olmecs, also made toys on wheels, but did not use the wheel in their economic practice. There is no big mystery here - the roots of this ignorance of the wheel go back to the mentality of the Indians and the “corn economy”. In this regard, the ancient Olmecs differed little from other Indian civilizations.

In addition to heads, the ancient Olmecs left numerous examples of monumental sculpture. All of them are carved from basalt monoliths or other durable stone. On Olmec stelae one can see scenes of a meeting between two clearly different human races. One of them is Africans. And in one of the Indian pyramids located near the Mexican city of Oaxaca, there are several stone steles with scenes carved on them of the captivity of bearded white people and... Africans by the Indians.

Olmec heads and images on steles represent physiologically accurate images of real representatives of the Negroid race, whose presence in Central America 3000 years ago is still a mystery. Where might Africans have come from in the New World before Columbus? Perhaps they were indigenous to America? There is evidence from paleoanthropologists that one of the migrations to the American continent during the last ice age actually included people of the Negroid race. This migration took place around 1500 BC. e.

There is another assumption - that in ancient times contacts between Africa and America were carried out across the ocean, which, as it turned out in recent decades, did not at all separate ancient civilizations. The claim that the New World was isolated from the rest of the world, which had long dominated science, was convincingly refuted by Thor Heyerdahl and Tim Severin, who proved that contacts between the Old and New Worlds could have taken place long before Columbus.

The Olmec civilization ceased to exist in the last century BC. But their culture did not perish - it organically entered the cultures of the Aztecs and Mayans. What about the Olmecs? In fact, the only “calling card” they left behind were giant stone heads. African heads...

The largest Olmec monuments 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 achieved real perfection in stone processing, including very hard rocks. Olmec jade products are rightfully considered masterpieces of ancient American art. Olmec monumental sculpture included multi-ton altars made of granite and basalt, carved steles, and human-sized sculptures. But one of the most remarkable and mysterious features of this civilization are 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 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 specific 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 carefully detailed ears with decorations in the form of large earrings or ear inserts. Ear piercing was a typical tradition for all ancient cultures of Mexico. One of the heads, the largest one from Rancho La Cobata, depicts a man with his eyes closed; all the other sixteen heads have their eyes wide open. Those. each such sculpture was supposed to depict a specific person with a characteristic set of individual traits. It can be said that Olmec heads are images of specific people. But despite the individuality of their features, all the giant Olmec heads 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 with the main anthropological type of the ancient population of Mexico. In Olmec art, whether sculpture, relief or small sculptures, in most cases, the typical Indian appearance characteristic of the American race is reflected. But not on giant heads. Such Negroid features were noted by the first researchers from the very beginning. This led to the emergence of various hypotheses: from assumptions about the migration of people 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 put to rest by representatives of official science. It was too inconvenient to consider that there could have been any contacts between America and Africa at the very dawn of civilization. The official theory did not imply them. And if so, then the Olmec heads are images of local rulers, after whose death such original memorial monuments were made. But Olmec heads are truly a unique phenomenon for ancient America. In the Olmec culture itself there are similar analogies, i.e. sculpted human heads. But unlike the 17 “Negro” heads, they depict portraits of people of a typical American race, are smaller in size and are made in accordance with a completely different pictorial canon. There is nothing like this in other cultures of ancient Mexico. In addition, one 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 how should we deal with the problem of Negroid traits? Whatever the dominant theories in historical science may claim, in addition to them there are also facts. The Anthropological Museum of the city of Jalapa (Veracruz state) houses an Olmec vessel in the form of a sitting elephant. It is considered proven that elephants in America disappeared with the end of the last glaciation, i.e. approximately 12 thousand years ago. But the Olmec knew the elephant, so much so that it was even depicted in figured ceramics. Either elephants still lived in the Olmec era, which contradicts paleozoological data, or Olmec craftsmen 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 awkward “trifles.” In addition, in the last century, in different areas of Mexico, at monuments with traces of the influence of the Olmec civilization (Monte Alban, Tlatilco), burials were discovered, the skeletons of which anthropologists identified as belonging to the Negroid race.

Giant Olmec heads pose many paradoxical questions to researchers. One of the heads from San Lorenzo has an internal tube connecting the sculpture's ear and mouth. How could such a complex internal channel be made in a monolithic basalt block 2.7 m high using primitive (not even metal) tools? Geologists who studied the Olmec heads determined that the basalt from which the heads at La Venta were made came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, the distance to which, measured in a straight line, is 90 kilometers. How did the ancient Indians, who did not even know wheels, transport monolithic stone blocks weighing 10-20 tons over rough terrain? American archaeologists believe that the Olmecs could have used reed rafts, which, along with cargo, were floated down the river into the Gulf of Mexico, and along the shore they delivered basalt blocks to their urban centers. But the distance from the Tuxtla quarries to the nearest river is about 40 km, and it is a dense swampy jungle.

In some myths about the creation of the world, which have survived to this day from various Mexican peoples, the emergence of the first cities is associated with newcomers from the north. According to one version, they sailed by boat from the north and landed at the Panuco River, then walked along the coast to Potonchan at the mouth of Jalisco (the ancient 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 legends.

According to another myth, seven tribes came from the north to the Mexican Highlands. Two peoples already lived here - the Chichimecs and the Giants. Moreover, the giants inhabited the lands east of modern Mexico City - the regions of Puebla and Cholula. Both peoples led a barbaric lifestyle, obtained food by hunting and ate raw meat. The newcomers from the north drove out the Chichemeks and destroyed the giants. Thus, according to the mythology of a number of Mexican peoples, 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 a race of ancient giants that preceded historical peoples are found in many Mexican myths. So the Aztecs believed that the earth was inhabited by giants in the era of the First Sun. They called the ancient giants "kiname" or "kinametine". The Spanish chronicler Bernardo de Sahagún identified these ancient giants with the Toltecs and believed that it was they who erected the giant pyramids in Teotehuacan and Cholula. Bernal Diaz, a member of the Cortez expedition, wrote in his book “The Conquest of New Spain” that after the conquistadors gained a foothold in the city of Tlaxcala (east of Mexico City, Puebla region), local Indians told them that in very ancient times people had settled in this area enormous height and strength. But since they had a bad character and bad customs, the Indians exterminated them. To confirm their words, the residents 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 height of Diaz himself. Those. the height 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 Gulf Coast. It is quite reasonable to assume that the giant heads of the Olmecs symbolized victory over the race of giants and 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 the giant Olmec heads have individual facial features?

Maybe those researchers are right who believe that the giant heads were portraits of rulers? But the study of paradoxical phenomena is always complicated by the fact that such historical phenomena rarely fit into the system of conventional 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 this time could have been transformed several times. The image of giants could be distorted to please the victors. Why not assume that giants were rulers of the Olmec cities for a time? And why not also assume that this ancient people of giants belonged to the Negroid race?

The ancient Ossetian epic “Tales of the Narts” is entirely imbued with the theme of the struggle of the Narts with the giants. They were called uaigi. But, what is most interesting, they were called black uaigs. And although the epic does not mention the skin color of the Caucasian giants anywhere, the adjective “black”, in relation to the Uaigs, 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 about distant eras is too scanty.

All that remains is to remember the great poet A.S. Pushkin, who used the rich heritage of Russian folklore in his work. In "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the main character encounters the head of a giant standing alone in an open field and defeats it. The same theme of defeating ancient giants and the same image of a giant head. And such a coincidence cannot be a mere coincidence.

By materials:

About three thousand years ago, an Indian culture arose on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, called Olmec. The ancient Olmec civilization, which dates back to the second millennium BC. e., ceased to exist in the first years of our era and one and a half thousand years before the heyday of the Aztec empire. The Olmec culture is sometimes called the "mother of cultures" of Central America and the earliest civilization of Mexico.

Giant Olmec heads pose many paradoxical questions to researchers. One of the heads from San Lorenzo has an internal tube connecting the sculpture's ear and mouth. How could such a complex internal channel be made in a monolithic basalt block 2.7 m high using primitive (not even metal) tools? Geologists who studied the Olmec heads determined that the basalt from which the heads at La Venta were made came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, the distance of which, measured in a straight line, is 90 kilometers. How did the ancient Indians, who did not even know wheels, transport monolithic stone blocks weighing 10-20 tons over rough terrain? American archaeologists believe that the Olmecs could have used reed rafts, which, along with cargo, were floated down the river into the Gulf of Mexico, and along the shore they delivered basalt blocks to their urban centers. But the distance from the Tuxtla quarries to the nearest river is about 40 km, and it is a dense swampy jungle.

About three thousand years ago, an Indian culture arose on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, called Olmec. This conventional name was given by the name of the Olmecs, a small group of Indian tribes who lived in this territory much later, in the 11th-14th centuries. The very name "Olmec", which means "rubber people", is of Aztec origin. The Aztecs named them after the area on the Gulf Coast where rubber was produced and where the contemporary Olmecs lived. So the Olmecs themselves and the Olmec culture are not at all the same thing. This circumstance is extremely difficult to understand for non-specialists like G. Hancock, who dedicated to the Olmecs in his book "Traces of the Gods" quite a few pages. Such publications only confuse the problem, while at the same time explaining nothing of the essence of the matter.

The first stone head was discovered in the 1930s by an American archaeologist. Matthew Stirling. He wrote in his report: “The head was carved from a separate massive basalt block. It rested on a foundation of unprocessed stone blocks. Being cleared of the ground, the head had a rather terrifying appearance. Despite its considerable size, it was processed very carefully and confidently, its proportions "ideal. A unique phenomenon among the sculptures of the aborigines of America, it is remarkable for its realism. Its features are distinct and clearly of the Negro type."

According to the site:

According to A. Lapin's book "RA":

Currently, 17 such heads are known, of which 10 are in San Lorenzo, 4 in La Venta, 2 in Tres Zapotes and 1 in Rancho la Cobato.

Olmec culture

The Olmec culture is one of the earliest cultures of Mesoamerica. The name of the people who created it has not been preserved (the name was given by the name of the Indian tribe that lived here much later). The main centers of the “Olmec” culture are large settlements: La Venta, Tres Zapotes, Cerro de las Mesas, San Lorenzo. They are located on the territory of the modern Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, in their coastal part. The chronological framework of the “Olmec” culture is ca. 800 BC – 100 AD

Analysis of the most important monuments of the “Olmec” culture allows us to identify several successive stages. The oldest of them dates back to the Middle Archaic period. The second stage is Late Archaic. The third stage is protoclassical and early classical.

The first two stages are characterized by development trends common to all of Mesoamerica. The formation of the distinctive features of the “Olmec” culture (primarily in the field of art) dates back no earlier than the second half of the 1st millennium BC, i.e. to the late archaic stage and to the transition period from archaic to civilization.

Characteristic features of the Olmec style are:

Depiction of a special type of human being (jaguar child).
Image of a jaguar (in the form of stylized masks).
Motif of a dwarf with pathological defects.
Ritual centers with a specific orientation and layout.
Ritual offerings and dedicatory treasures (hides) in the platforms of buildings.
Mirrors made of polished stone.
Colossal stone heads in helmets.
Steles and altars.

The bearers of the “Olmec” culture grew maize, beans, pumpkin, and zucchini. They knew how to construct irrigation canals, build dams and dams. Certain types of crafts have reached a high level: construction, stone-cutting, pottery, weaving. Trade probably also existed. This is evidenced, in particular, by the finds of “Olmecoid” figurines in other areas of Mesoamerica.

Almost nothing is known about the social structure and political structure of the Olmec society. Analysis of burial complexes shows that the process of property differentiation in local society has gone quite far. The presence of ritual centers with a certain layout indicates a fairly high level of organization of power. The role of the leader, who primarily exercised military functions, is strengthening. On the monuments of the "Olmec" monuments there are triumphal scenes depicting rulers. A special layer was the priesthood (cult scenes with the participation of priests are also not uncommon on the “Olmec” monuments). In general, the social structure of the local tribes was unlikely to differ significantly from similar societies of the ancient world and continued the previous tribal relations.

The discovery of the "Olmec" culture and the long period of its existence led to the emergence of a serious scientific problem. Its solution depends on establishing the time to which the “Olmec” style of art belongs (small plastic jade, colossal heads, basalt steles and altars). If it occurs in Middle Archaic times, then the “Olmec” culture can be considered as the ancestor of all the high cultures of Mesoamerica. If this style belongs to the protoclassical or early classical period, then the question of its role as an alma mater in the history of Mesoamerica disappears. This issue still remains controversial, but the second point of view looks more convincing. In this case, the most advanced areas of Mexico and Central America (the highland and lowland Mayans, the Zapotecs of Monte Alban, the inhabitants of Central Mexico and the Gulf Coast) arrived at the threshold of civilization more or less simultaneously.

For work V.G.Zubareva

All these heads are carved from solid blocks of basalt. The smallest have a height of 1.5 m, the largest is about 3.5 m. Most Olmec heads are about 2 m. Accordingly, the weight of these huge sculptures ranges from 10 to 35 tons!

When you look at the heads, many questions immediately arise to which you still want to get a clear answer from the all-knowing science. The facial features of each of the 17 giant heads are not individual and they all have one thing in common - characteristic Negroid features. Where did blacks come from in pre-Columbian America, if, according to official science, there could have been no contacts between Africa and America before Columbus? And the Olmecs themselves did not look like blacks at all, as follows from numerous other figurines and figurines. And only these 17 heads are endowed with Negroid features.

With the help of what tools, in the absence of metal (again, according to the official version), basalt, one of the strongest stones, from which the heads are made, was processed with such precision and detail? Is it really a different stone?

How were multi-ton blocks, some weighing up to 35 tons, transported to the processing site 90 km from the place of their extraction through the jungle over rough terrain? Despite the fact that (according to the same version) the Olmecs did not know wheels (by the way, it has already been proven that they knew).

Why make them so big? After all, the Olmecs have many other sculptures, including heads of quite normal size and quite American (Indian) appearance. And only these 17 black faces are an exception. Why are they so honored? Or is it life-size?

Now let's try to answer these questions...

Photo 2.

The Olmec civilization is considered the first, “mother” civilization of Mexico. Like all other first civilizations, it appeared immediately and in a “ready-made form”: with developed hieroglyphic writing, an accurate calendar, canonized art, and developed architecture. According to the ideas 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 Olmec cultural influence can be traced throughout Central Mexico. Until now, nothing is known about the people who created this first Mexican civilization. The name "Olmec", meaning "people of rubber", was given by modern scientists. But where did this people come from, what language did they speak, where did they disappear centuries later - all these main questions remain unanswered after more than half a century of research into Olmec culture.

The Olmecs are Mexico's oldest and most mysterious civilization. These peoples settled along the entire Gulf Coast around the third millennium BC.
The Coatzecoalcos was the main river of the Olmecs. Its name translated means “ Sanctuary of the Snake».

According to legends, it was in this river that farewell to the ancient deity Quetzalcoatl took place. Quetzalcoatl, or the Great Cuculan, as the Mayans called him, was a feathered serpent and a mysterious figure. This snake had a powerful physique, noble facial features, and, in general, a completely human appearance.
I wonder where he came from among the red-skinned and beardless Olmecs? According to legends, he came and left on the water. It was he who taught the Olmecs all crafts, moral principles and the calculation of time. Quetzalcoatl condemned sacrifices and was against violence.

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All heads are made in the same stylistic manner, but it is obvious that each of them is a portrait of a specific 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 carefully detailed ears with decorations in the form of large earrings or ear inserts. Ear piercing was a typical tradition for all ancient cultures of Mexico. One of the heads, the largest one from Rancho La Cobata, depicts a man with his eyes closed; all the other sixteen heads have their eyes wide open. Those. each such sculpture was supposed to depict a specific person with a characteristic set of individual traits. It can be said that Olmec heads are images of specific people. But despite the individuality of their features, all the giant Olmec heads are united by one common and mysterious feature.

Photo 7.

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 with the main anthropological type of the ancient population of Mexico. In Olmec art, whether sculpture, relief or small sculptures, in most cases, the typical Indian appearance characteristic of the American race is reflected. But not on giant heads. Such Negroid features were noted by the first researchers from the very beginning. This led to the emergence of various hypotheses: from assumptions about the migration of people 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 put to rest by representatives of official science. It was too inconvenient to consider that there could have been any contacts between America and Africa at the very dawn of civilization. The official theory did not imply them.

Photo 8.

Photo 9.

And if so, then the Olmec heads are images of local rulers, after whose death such original memorial monuments were made. But Olmec heads are truly a unique phenomenon for ancient America. In the Olmec culture itself there are similar analogies, i.e. sculpted human heads. But unlike the 17 “Negro” heads, they depict portraits of people of a typical American race, are smaller in size and made in accordance with a completely different pictorial canon. There is nothing like this in other cultures of ancient Mexico. In addition, one 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?

It is considered proven that elephants in America disappeared with the end of the last glaciation, i.e. approximately 12 thousand years ago. But the Olmec knew the elephant, so much so that it was even depicted in figured ceramics. Either elephants still lived in the Olmec era, which contradicts paleozoological data, or Olmec craftsmen 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 awkward “trifles.” In addition, in the last century, in different areas of Mexico, at monuments with traces of the influence of the Olmec civilization (Monte Alban, Tlatilco), burials were discovered, the skeletons of which anthropologists identified as belonging to the Negroid race.

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Bernal Diaz, a member of the Cortez expedition, wrote in his book “The Conquest of New Spain” that after the conquistadors gained a foothold in the city of Tlaxcala (east of Mexico City, Puebla region), local Indians told them that in very ancient times people had settled in this area enormous height and strength. But since they had a bad character and bad customs, the Indians exterminated them. To confirm their words, the residents 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 height of Diaz himself. Those. the height of these giants was more than three times the height of an ordinary person.

Photo 16.

In the book “The Conquest of New Spain,” he describes how the Indians told them that in ancient times people of enormous stature settled in these places, but the Indians did not agree with their characters and killed everyone. Quote from the book:
« They also reported that before their arrival the country was inhabited by giants, rude and wild, who later either died out or were destroyed. As proof, they showed the femur of such a giant. Indeed, she was the size of my full height, and I’m not small. And there were a fair number of such bones; we were amazed and horrified at such a breed of past times and decided to send samples to His Majesty in Spain».
Russian translation of the book: http://www.gramotey....140358220925600
The quote is taken from the chapter “Friendship with Tlaxcala.”

There was no point in lying to the author, the matters being discussed were much more important than long-extinct and non-dangerous giants, and this was said and shown by the Indian casually, as a matter of course. And the book is about something completely different. And if a modern TV channel can still be suspected of falsifying facts in order to increase ratings, then a person who publicly promised 500 years ago to send “non-existent” giant human bones to the king can only be suspected of idiocy. Which is very difficult to do after reading his book.
Traces of giants have been found in this area and in the manuscripts of the Aztecs (Aztec codices), who later lived in the same places, in the form of drawings, and in many Mexican myths.

Drawing from an Aztec manuscript. Judging by how many people can pull one big man, he is also very heavy. Maybe it's his head etched in stone?

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It remains only to remember the great poet A.S. Pushkin, who used the rich heritage of Russian folklore in his work. In "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the main character encounters the head of a giant standing alone in an open field and defeats it. The same theme of defeating ancient giants and the same image of a giant head. And such a coincidence cannot be a mere coincidence.

Graham Hancock in the book “Traces of the Gods” he writes: “The most amazing thing was that Tres Zapotes was not a Mayan city at all. It was completely, exclusively, undeniably Olmec. This meant that it was the Olmecs, and not the Mayans, who invented the calendar, that it was the Olmec culture, and not the Mayans, that was the “progenitor” of the cultures of Central America... Olmec much older than Mayan. They were a skilled, civilized, technically advanced people, and it was they who invented the dot and dash calendar, in which the starting point is a mysterious date August 13, 3114 BC."

Most Olmec stone heads depict a man with Negroid facial features. But 2000 years ago there were no black Africans in the New World; the first of them appeared much later than the Conquest, when the slave trade began. However, there is solid evidence from paleoanthropologists that one of the migrations to the territory of the American continent during the last ice age actually included people of the Negroid race. This migration took place around 15 thousand years BC

In San Lorenzo, the Olmecs built an artificial hill more than 30 meters, as part of a huge structure 1200 meters long and 600 meters wide. Archaeologist Michael Coe During excavations in 1966, he made a number of finds, including over twenty artificial reservoirs connected by a very complex network of gutters lined with basalt. Part of this network was built into the watershed. When this place was excavated, water again began to flow from there in heavy rains, as it had done for more than three thousand years. The main drainage line ran from east to west. Three auxiliary lines were cut into it, and the connections were made very competently from a technical point of view. Having carefully examined the system, archaeologists were forced to admit that they could not understand the purpose of this complex system of water conduits and other hydraulic structures.

Olmec still remain a mystery to archaeologists. No traces of Olmec evolution could be found, as if this people appeared out of nowhere. Nothing is known about the social organization, rituals and belief system of the Olmecs, what language they spoke, what ethnic group they belonged to, and not a single Olmec skeleton has survived.

The Mayans inherited their calendar from the Olmecs, who used it a thousand years before the Mayans. But where did the Olmecs get it from? What level of technical and scientific development of civilization is required to develop such a calendar?

Huge stone head-shaped sculptures found in the former “Olmec country” in Mexico still raise many questions. Scientists cannot determine their exact age, the reliable reason for their construction, and some even see in them features of representatives of the Negroid race. However, many other secrets are connected with the Olmec civilization, whose writing has not yet been deciphered.

In total, 17 sculptures were found in Mexico, weighing from 6 to 40 tons. All the sculptures are made in the form of male heads from basalt rocks, and one of them was not even completed and did not leave the quarry, where it was discovered. The sculptures were found in the mountains of the Mexican state of Veracruz on the Gulf Coast. All places are part of the so-called “Olmec country” - the territory in which the ancient civilization of the Olmec Indians existed.

According to research, the Olmec civilization is the oldest in Mesoamerica, and its heyday dates back to 1500-400 BC. Subsequently, the Olmec civilization disappeared, leaving a legacy of pyramids, aqueducts, writing that still cannot be deciphered, and huge sculptures in the form of heads. It is assumed that the ancient Mayans borrowed their calendar from the Olmecs, with whom they lived next door. The Aztec chronicles also mention the Olmecs, which indicates contact between these cultures.

The first basalt head in Mexico was discovered in the 60s of the 19th century near the village of Tres Zapotes in the state of Veracruz, and two more sculptures made of black basalt were later found there. The weight of these sculptures ranges from 5 to 40 tons. According to archaeologists, the sculptures perpetuate the memory of the ancient Olmec leaders, but how they ended up in the jungle several tens of kilometers from the basalt deposit is not yet clear. Subsequently, other sculptures called “Olmec heads” were found in the same state. The sculptures were supposedly made during the heyday of the Olmec civilization. All of them are made in the same style, they wear something like helmets or caps on their heads, but each of them has an individual face. Many scientists, not without reason, point to the obvious Negroid facial features of the sculptures, although other statues and sculptures from the Olmec civilization period have Mongoloid facial features characteristic of Mesoamerica.

The famous traveler and explorer Thor Heyerdahl pointed out the possibility of contacts between the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the peoples of the New World. It is precisely such contacts, in his opinion, that can explain some similar features in the Egyptian and American civilizations, as well as the fact that the Olmec civilization arose in a short period, as if borrowing its knowledge from a more developed civilization. It is likely that the mysterious heads are a reflection of this contact and depict not Olmec leaders, but sailors from Africa who have repeatedly visited the jungles of the Gulf of Mexico.

Be that as it may, the Olmec civilization disappeared as suddenly as it appeared on the American continent, and scientists are still trying to unravel their secrets.