Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777)

by Menzies, Gavin; Hudson, Ian

  “Do certain colors represent points of the compass?”

  “Yes—east is red because that’s where the sun rises, west is black because the sun sets there, north is white, from where the rains come, and south is yellow because it is the sunniest point of the sky.”

  I was startled. He answered yes to most of my questions. I asked him if people there, as in China, make alcohol by chewing and spitting corn.

  “Yes, we call it chicha.”

  I also asked him if the locals around San Cristóbal brew alcohol using European stills. No, he said. “We have much better stills than Europeans. The Spanish were surprised by ours when they arrived.”

  As in Asia, I found the indigenous people of Mexico were making complex ceramic from kaolin clay, fine pottery long before the Spanish arrived.

  As for clothing and textiles, the story was much the same. Tree bark was used for clothing long before European contact. While the locals do use European looms for their brightly designed dresses and other clothing, they also use a kind of backstrap loom that is quite different from the European system.

  Houses, as they are among the Chinese, are built on a north-south axis; bark was also used to make books; Mayans read from top to bottom and right to left; they had mirrors before the arrival of the Spaniards; had nine gods in their Mayan religion, worshipped the rain god, Chac, in their language. They worshipped jaguars, while ancient Chinese venerated the tiger. The only questions that came up with a negative were about the use of dogs as sacrifice and as food, which does take place in China, but not among the descendants of the Maya.

  Aside from these remarkable similarities, my fellow travelers and I ventured to say that the descendants of the Maya in and around San Cristóbal and in the traditional Indian villages closely resemble Chinese in stature, proportion, hair, eyes, demeanor, and vivacity.

  THE OLMEC SITE OF LA VENTA

  From San Cristóbal, almost a mile and a half above sea level, we traveled about two hundred miles northwest to La Venta, in Tabasco state along the Gulf of Mexico. The change in altitude was noticeable and was something to get used to. Some of us were left breathless and had difficulty sleeping at 7,200 feet. We noticed the change when we descended into the tropical areas once again, this time along the coast. As we approached La Venta the air grew warmer and stickier. On reaching the Gulf of Mexico, we were greeted by pelicans, each with its own guano-stained post—a clear illustration of the wealth of fish here. The birds were busy diving into the sea every few minutes, then emerging with their throats bulging as they swallowed fish after fish.

  The ancient settlement of La Venta is now the site of modern oil fields. The Olmec used tar from these fields to waterproof their boats. They are also said to be the first people to have used petroleum for fuel—but I have been unable to find confirmation.

  The Olmec settled here by 1600 B.C., although this date is continuously being pushed back. That is the same time that Ramses II was building his temples; before the Assyrian Empire and a thousand years before the Parthenon was built in Athens. In short, the Olmec was one of the oldest civilizations in the world. They chose a site on what was then an island just offshore, near some mighty rivers—the Grijalva, Tulija, and San Pedro—that emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. The combination of marshland and sea provided a constant supply of food throughout the year. From the sea, albacore, tuna, and snapper; manatees, turtles, caymans, and Morelet’s crocodiles. From the rivers: clams, crabs, and snails. From the beaches, salt. From the marshes: agoutis and armadillos. From the woods: turkeys, bush rabbits, wild pigs, and white-tailed deer. Fruit was abundant—custard apples, soursops, ramón nuts, guavas, and allspice. The famous trio of vegetables—maize, beans, and squash—provided vitamins (maize was boiled with lime to release vitamins), supplemented by sweet potatoes, yams, and cassava.

  The Olmec were skillful farmers and hydraulic engineers, building a series of dikes and canals for irrigation to terraced fields and kitchen gardens—all in all a rich environment in which to develop their civilization. The first villages around La Venta emerged around five thousand years ago—scattered settlements with small populations and an egalitarian form of social organization, land being held communally. Between 1900 and 1400 B.C. social and economic life developed. People began to exchange raw materials such as obsidian, a black or green type of glass used to make a wide range of weapons and tools. People began to specialize; some families became more important than others and more and more plants were grown.

  Between about 1800 and 1400 B.C. social and economic life developed to the extent that life was not only about survival—communal buildings were built for ceremonial purposes, as were temples and small pyramids. Over the next four centuries this type of architecture spread fast along the Gulf coast. Around 1300 B.C. the first great monumental work was built at San Lorenzo, near La Venta. As described by “Olmecs,” published by the magazine Arqueología Mexicana, “social stratification became ever more complex.” Over the course of time, culture and economy developed around settlements that became centers of activity in what was to become Mexico. The Olmec emerged in the thirteenth century B.C. and thrived for six centuries, as “the first clearly stratified society in Mexico. . . . Other centers developed at San Lorenzo, Tenochtitlan, La Venta, Tres Zapotes and Laguna de los Ceros, in Southern Veracruz and Tabasco. This ‘mother culture,’ as the anthropologist Alfonso Casa called it, was the origin of many cultural traditions of ancient Mexico. The people who lived here played a fundamental role in the development of complex societies, and are the direct predecessors of those who built the centers and cities that were to arrive later. . . .”

  These ancient cultural groups and their civilizations became great city centers that developed advanced systems of architecture, science (including astronomy), mathematics (including a system of keeping time), agriculture, art, and design. All of their pursuits were fundamentally intertwined with religious practice.

  Ancient Mexico, with the development of its cities, flourished 2,200 years ago and amounted to a “revolution” in how human beings lived and spent their lives. “For the first time, large human populations lived in places covering several square miles, radically transforming their environment. Social and economic institutions linked to the existence of these societies often covered wide regions.”

  In the succeeding chapters we will delve more deeply into the Olmec’s achievements, including this amazing revolution in human society. We’ll also look more closely at how Olmec civilization became the mother culture of Central America.

  PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT

  The frozen Bering Strait and one of the Diomede Islands, located in the middle of the strait. Many historians believe that the first “Americans” arrived by traipsing across barren, icy tundra from Asia some fifteen thousand years ago. However, recently uncovered evidence shows that ancient man made abundant use of ocean currents and winds to sail to the Americas as far back as forty thousand years ago.

  Images from along the Silk Route. Sad though it is to relate, the story of the Silk Route as a continuous conduit from China to the West, which supposedly facilitated fabulous Chinese ceramics and silk reaching Persia and Venice, is a myth. The Silk Road was a vibrant commercial highway, but the land route ended at Jiayuguan. Goods bound for the West must have gone by ship, not over land.

  Zea mays, the great American crop otherwise known as corn. These are all items that are understood to have traveled between continents after the arrival of European colonists in America and the proliferation of the slave trade. However, recent evidence indicates that these organisms must have been transported by sea centuries before the age of Columbus. For example, the discovery of hookworms in Brazilian remains dating to 7,200 years ago as well as in Amazon Indian populations allows for no alternative, as the parasitic worm could never have survived a slow, generations-long migration across the cold, harsh conditions of the Bering Strait.

  The infectious hookworm

  To
bacco

  The stepped pyramids of China are remarkably similar in shape to those found in Mesoamerica.

  Faces with Asiatic features can be seen clearly in Olmec art.

  These pre-Columbian Peruvian ceramics display Asian features in the faces of their subjects.

  Juanita, the Inca Ice Maiden, whose DNA was found to be Taiwanese.

  Mesoamerican artwork displays numerous similarities with pieces found in ancient Asian civilizations. Parallels abound in both form and function between the works in originating in China and those found in the Americas, each of which is highly suggestive of a direct artistic lineage from Eastern settlers to early American civilization.

  The Aztec Calendar Stone (also known as the Sun Stone), discovered in 1790, is an enormously sophisticated artifact proving ancient Americans had time to develop advanced understandings of astronomy, geometry, and mathematics. While the Aztecs employed two systems of date (a 260-day religious calendar—tonalpohualli, as depicted on the stone—as well as a 365-day agricultural calendar—xiuhpohualli), other Mesoamerican civilizations, like the Olmec and the Mayans, developed very similar systems. Our research has uncovered startling links between the Olmec and Mayan calendars and those of the Shang and Han dynasties; overlaps in their practice of astronomy abound, as they both employed the same use of a lunar cycle–based month, as well as calendars of twenty nine and thirty alternating days.

  “Nova Cataia,” a Chinese settlement sheltered away for ages on Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada. The northernmost ancient Chinese oceangoing outpost we have yet discovered, Nova Cataia appears to have been the North American capital city for the Chinese. Depicted here is a cut stone (a piece of the expansive walls that would have protected the site) and the remains of stone terraces on this huge, tragically underexcavated and underexamined American settlement.

  One of the Palos Verdes stone anchors, discovered in the 1970s by divers southwest of Los Angeles. After extensive research on these mysterious artifacts by both the University of California and the University of San Diego, we can now conclude that these anchors are Chinese in origin and have been lying at the bottom of the sea for centuries (as evidenced by manganese deposits built up on the surface of the stone). Though many have suggested that the anchors may have come from fishing vessels, the huge concentration that has been unearthed is much more indicative of a wrecked fleet, which further supports the theory that ancient Chinese civilizations traveled to the Americas in great numbers.

  Cave art at Pedra Furada, Brazil, provides reliable and widely accepted carbon dating that extends human habitation back to roughly 40,000 B.C.

  The “Hendon Harris World Map 5,” one of the earliest Chinese maps of the Americas (c. 2200 B.C.), and David Alan Deal’s modern-day interpretation of the “Harris World Map.”

  This map in the Doge’s Palace, Venice, clearly depicts the northwest coastline of Canada and North and Central America set “upside down” (with the north at the bottom), as was the practice of Chinese cartographers. The map has roundels stating it was composed from information brought from China by Marco Polo and Nicolo da Conti.

  Marco Polo’s map—“The Map with Ship” from the Rossi Collection depicts a similar coastline to the Doge’s palace map.

  The “Kangnido” world map of 1402 by Ch’uan Chin and Li Hui shows the Azores in the Atlantic before the Portuguese discovered these islands in 1439.

  Di Virga’s map (latest date 1419) delineates the Eastern Hemisphere of the world with remarkable accuracy, before European voyages of exploration had started.

  Left hemisphere of Shanhai Yudi Quantu, c. 1607.

  The Liu Gang map, found in a small secondhand bookshop in Shanghai in 2001, proves that the Chinese in the era of Zheng He not only had a sophisticated understanding of Earth’s geography but had indeed made exploratory voyages to the American continents.

  “Universalis Cosmographiae,” the Waldseemüller map of 1507, shows the Pacific coast of the Americas before Balboa or Magellan set sail. Compare the shape of the Americas with the Shanhai Yudi Quantu.

  The right hemisphere of the Shanhai Yudi Quantu, c. 1607.

  Waldseemüller’s 1506 “Green Globe.”

  Schöner’s globes of 1515 and 1520 clearly depict North and South America. They show the Strait of Magellan, supposedly first “discovered” after the strait had been drawn on these globes.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Olmec: The Foundation Culture of Central America

  The importance of Olmec civilization was rediscovered by Europeans only in the last hundred years, notably by Matthew Stirling (1896–1975). In contrast, Frederick Catherwood drew the world’s attention to the Maya a century earlier. Perhaps for that reason Maya culture is relatively well known, whereas more and more of Olmec culture is still being discovered—on an almost daily basis.

  The Maya, Zapotec, Mazatec, and Toltec copied and adapted Olmec culture, including their way of life, their art, and their architecture. Their ancient towns can be found along the length and breadth of southern Mexico and Central America. It is essential to consider the similarities among these civilizations and compare their artwork, pyramids, astronomy, and mathematics.

  Plan of La Venta archaeological site.

  Olmec sites, from about 1200 B.C., were based on a formalized layout embracing a great pyramid, a central plaza, a religious area, burial tombs, a domestic quarter, statues, and art. The city was built on a north-south orientation with a commercial center, where sacred and ritual aspects predominated, in the north of the site. (Please see Complex A on the plan of La Venta above.) This exclusive precinct was out of bounds to the common people, usually protected by basalt barriers. At the heart of this ceremonial center (see plan), a basalt tomb was erected that contained a sarcophagus for the ruler, usually including a collection of carved jade ornaments. Often figurines were placed in this central courtyard; at La Venta, sixteen serpentine jade and sandstone figurines were positioned in a half circle, whereas Tikal had carved tablets.

  South of this ceremonial area were open public spaces (Complex C on plan). The central pyramid was usually in the center of this central plaza, built of rammed earth and faced with stone, to be described in greater detail in the next chapter.

  South of the public spaces were areas for the priests and hierarchy—storehouses and offices supplied with running water and drainage systems.

  At the northern extremity of the site at La Venta are three colossal heads, each weighing more than twenty tons, carved out of basalt brought from hills nearly one hundred miles away. It was a great feat to have transported such heavy objects over such a distance.

  Workers and tradespeople lived on farms and in villages surrounding the whole complex. These were the people who supplied food for the priests and the artisans who were constructing the site.

  The basic layout was copied at other Olmec ceremonial sites—first near La Venta, then at Comalcalco, Tortuguero, Pomona, and Moral-Reforma. Later, more distant Olmec sites are found at Morelos, on the Mexican altiplano; Tzutzuculi and Tonalá on the Pacific coast; and La Democracia in Guatemala.

  This essential design was also adopted in Mayan sites and can be clearly seen at Monte Albán, which was in many ways a transitional site between Olmec and Mayan culture. The same principles are seen in the architecture of Tikal, whose central court copies Comalcalco’s and whose pyramids adopt La Venta’s methods of construction.

  The political structure of the Olmec was likewise adopted by the Maya. Property was communally owned. At the top were the priests, headed by a king or leader who induced or coerced the people to build the gigantic structures over the centuries. The common people toiled away relatively safe and secure, well fed and reasonably healthy, but they lived outside the ceremonial centers.

  Trade was well developed—roads connected La Venta with Olmec cities on the Pacific coast, with Monte Albán and Teotihuacán on the North, and with La Democracia in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras. Evidence of that tr
ade can be found in Mayan tombs—Olmec objects connected with worship, such as figurines, urns, and statues, can be seen at Monte Albán, and giant Olmec heads at Monte Alto.

  The Olmec developed a system of writing that was adapted at Monte Albán and Mitla and subsequent Mayan sites, and a system of counting and mathematics that may also be seen at Monte Albán and later Mayan sites, as will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. At Abaj Takalik, a site in Guatemala, is a table with both Olmec and Mayan writing on it.

  La Venta boasts the first ball court in the Americas, on which the “rubber people” (which is what Olmec means in Nahuatl) could play their favorite game with a round rubber ball. The ball court was adopted all over the later Mayan world, reaching its height of sophistication at Copan, where there were nineteen courts. Thousands of spectators could watch the game at the enormous court at Chichen Itza. At Tikal, players became professionals, being trained from an early age and playing “away matches.”

  The cult of the jaguar permeated Olmec life and was adopted by the Maya. The jaguar was represented in carvings on buildings, in figurines, in statues that had jaguar heads atop human bodies, and in mosaic floors—there are thousands of examples in Mayan, Toltec, Zapotec, and Mazatec sites.

  The Olmec were an astonishing people who burst upon the world and became the Americas’ founding civilization at least as early as the New Kingdom of Egypt, long before classical Greece and Rome, even before the Persian Empire. For many historians and archaeologists, they appeared to have emerged out of the swamps from nowhere—or did they?