August 7, 2025 • 15 mins
Thousands of years ago the people of the Mexican jungle carved massive stone heads.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Viitto.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Welcome and we biu beneathos to episode number eighty of
Mexico Coon Explained, where we examined the magic, the mysteries
and the miracles of Mexico. I'm youre host, Robert Biddo.
The year was eighteen sixty nine. In a rather obscure
publication printed by the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics,
(01:17):
there appeared a short notice written by a man named
Jose Melgar. It was accompanied by an engraving of what
is now known as monument A at Tres Sapotes. Melga wrote,
in eighteen sixty two, I was in the region of
San Andres Tuchla, a town in the state of Veracruz, Mexico.
(01:39):
During my excursions, I learned that a colossal head had
been unearthed a few years before in the following manner.
Some one and a half leagues from a sugar cane
hacienda on the western slopes of the Sierra of San Martin,
a laborer of the hacienda, while cutting the forest for
his field, discovered on the surface of the ground what
(02:03):
looked like the bottom of a great iron kettle, turned
upside down. He notified the owner of the hacienda, who
ordered its excavation, and in the place of the kettle
was discovered the above mentioned head. It was left in
the excavation, as one would not think to move it,
being of granite and measuring two yards in height with
(02:25):
corresponding proportions. On my arrival at the hacienda, I asked
the owner of the property where the head was discovered
to take me to look at it. We went, and
I was struck with surprise. As a work of art,
it is, without exaggeration, a magnificent sculpture. What astonished me
(02:46):
was the Ethiopic type represented. I reflected that there had
undoubtedly been Negroes in this country, and that this had
been in the first epoch of the world. At the
time of Melgar's writings, most of Mexico's ancient past was
still shrouded in mystery. The writing system of the Maya
(03:07):
was a century from being deciphered. Many of the major
ruins that are familiar today were not even known of
or explored thoroughly. The scientific method as applied to archaeology,
which was not even a formally recognized discipline, was far
from being used. Lost cities in the jungle and rumors
(03:30):
of vanished civilizations fuelled much speculation about the origins of
ancient Mesoamerican peoples. At any given time during the nineteenth century,
the ancient Mexicans were said to have been ancient Assyrians,
prehistoric travelers from India, a lost tribe of Israel, shipwrecked Romans, and,
(03:52):
as Melgar speculated, black Africans. The features on that first olmechead,
found in eighteen fifty eight would puzzle investigators for quite
some time. It had a flat and wide nose, full lips,
and eyes without the characteristic fold found in Native Americans.
(04:14):
As the science of archaeology developed and more of these
heads were discovered, a clearer view of what would later
be called the Olmec civilization would come about. Melgar's head
would not be known outside of Mexico until nineteen o five,
when German archaeologist Edward Seller and his wife visited it,
(04:35):
and European newspapers picked up the story. It would be
the only colossal Ulmec's stone had known until the nineteen
twenty five discovery of the archaeological site of Laventa in
the modern Mexican state of Tabasco by a Danish born archaeologist,
Franz Blom and his American expedition partner Oliver LeFarge from
(04:58):
Tulane University. The two did not realize that they had
stumbled upon a lost city built by the members of
Mexico's oldest civilization, the Olmecs, and described Leventa as a
Maya syte. The term Olmec had been around since the
sixteenth century, but was not frequently used, and it was
(05:18):
not employed the way it is to day to denote
the mother of Mesoamerican civilizations that existed in the Mexican
Jungles from around twelve hundred BC to four hundred BC.
The term Olmec loosely translates to the rubber people or
people who live in the land of rubber. By the
nineteen thirties, the term began to be used when describing
(05:41):
the pre Maya people of the tropical lowlands, who built
large civic ceremonial centers and left behind thousands of intricate artifacts.
Matthew Sterling of the Smithsonian Institution discovered a dated inscription
at the site of Tresipotes in nineteen thirty nine, put
the city's heyday centuries before the Classic Maya civilization. By
(06:05):
the middle of the twentieth century, a more solid picture
began to emerge of what is known today as the
Olmec civilization, centered around three major sites on Mexico's Gulf coast,
Tresa Potes, Laventa, and San Lorenzo. The huge, disembodied stone
heads are perhaps the most famous hallmarks of the Olmec.
(06:28):
There are seventeen known Olmec colossal stone heads, the last
one discovered in nineteen ninety four. Ten were uncovered at
the site of San Lorenzo, four at Laventa, two at
Tresa Potes, and one at the small archaeological site of
Lacobata in the state of Veracruz. Outside these seventeen heads,
(06:50):
there has been discovered in tacalik A Baje, Guatemala, an
altar stone that may have been carved out of a
former Olmec head. Possible fragments of colossal heads have been
found in San Lorenzo at a much smaller site called
San Fernando in the state of Tabasco, made of basalt.
Each head measures approximately five to eleven feet tall and
(07:14):
weighs between six to fifty tons. Facial features are similar
among the heads, big lips, rounded cheeks, and broad noses.
Each head also wears what looks like a helmet or
head dress. While each Omec head is stylistically similar, each
piece is unique, almost with a specific personality, which leads
(07:37):
researchers to believe that these sculptures were made to represent
real rulers. Facial expressions of these heads generally tend to
be stern looking or expressionless. However, the head known as
Laventa monument Iwo, with its bunched cheeks and upturned lips,
is clearly smiling at the viewer. This is in stark
(07:59):
contrast to the first head discovered by Melgar in the
eighteen fifties, which has an expression of displeasure, almost a frown.
A case can also be made that these heads represented
rulers because of the sheer amount of resources it took
to make them. Quarry people, laborers, to move the stones, artists,
(08:21):
and other assorted workers took a lot of coordination and control,
and archaeologists theorize that the monumental sculptures would only have
been possible in a highly stratified, top down society. Besides,
the differences in the appearances of the heads suggest unique
individuals and not standard representations of the gods. With no
(08:46):
oral history or written records about these heads, it is
difficult to determine why they were made or how old
they actually are. Scholars generally date them to the height
of Olmec civilization, which was about nine hundred BC. Some
heads are dated by association by making assumptions about what
(09:06):
is found around them. This is often tricky, as many
of the heads clearly have been moved from their original locations,
possibly several times. As it is impossible to date carved stone,
researchers may never be able to determine exact dates of
these heads. As mentioned earlier, the stone heads were fashioned
(09:29):
from basalt. Researchers have determined that the stones used in
all seventeen known Olmec heads come from one source, the
Sierra de los Tuchelas in the state of Veracruz. On
the southern slopes of the mountains to this day are
large boulders made out of what is called Cerro Scynthepec basalt,
(09:51):
which ranges from a light to dark gray color. Those
boulders that were seen as head shaped were probably selected
for tra transport off the mountain. Some of these boulders
took a journey of almost one hundred miles to reach
the final destinations of the workshops in the major Olmec
urban centers. As the Olmechs had no beasts of burden
(10:15):
or no practical use of the wheel, one can only
imagine how these gigantic boulders were moved across hills, swamps,
and waterways. Basalt workshops have been discovered at San Lorenzo,
where the colossal boulders were most likely transformed into the
heads of kings. As the Olmechs had no metal tools,
(10:37):
the huge heads were fashioned by the use of stone tools.
Stone on stone, sand like abrasives were found in these workshops,
leading archaeologists to believe that in the final stages of sculpting,
the heads were smoothed out and finally finished. It must
have taken months to make just one head, if not longer,
(11:00):
and that does not include transport, which may have added
additional months to the project. Outside of mainstream archaeology, there
exists a separate field of scholarship devoted to the Olmec heads,
which concentrates on the out of Africa theory of the
origins of the Olmec. Much of the traditional archaeological literature
(11:21):
refers to the sculptures as having Negroid features. The discoverer
of the first olmechead, Jose Melgar, described it as having
Ethiopic features and assumed that a Black civilization once visited
ancient Mexico. Melgar's initial impressions are often cited by the
(11:41):
African ancestry revisionists. In Clyde Winter's book Atlantis in Mexico
and Ivan van Certema's They Came before Columbus the African
Presence in Ancient America, the authors make the case for
an ancient African civilization that had a kingdom in Mexico
a few thousand years ago. Not only do the authors
(12:05):
refer to the colossal stone heads and other artwork, they
refer to claims of African skeletons being found at some
Olmech sites. The evidence of the skeletons has been suppressed,
many alternative researchers claim, much like evidence for giants or
extraterrestrials has been suppressed. Besides rumors of skeletons and the
(12:28):
Olmech heads having Negroid features, there is very little to
this out of Africa theory, which gained momentum in the
nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies during the huge wave of
alternative theories about ancient Mexico. The fact that the modern
day natives of the Tabasco and Vera Cruz areas still
(12:48):
have the same features as those found on the colossal
stone heads, and they lack any African DNA is of
little consolation to a researcher inclined to think a certain way.
Until more tangible evidence comes to the surface of African contact,
most archaeologists are content to call the Olmechs the mother
(13:09):
civilization of ancient Mexico and see them as something uniquely
and altogether Mexican. A colossal Olmechs stone head even made
it into American popular culture on August eleventh, nineteen ninety one,
during the second season of the animated television series The Simpsons,
(13:30):
a show aired in which Bart saves mister Burns's life
with a blood transfusion. As a token of his appreciation,
mister Burns gives Bart a huge stone head, which he
calls Extapo Lapachttl, the ol mech God of War. The
family doesn't like the olmech Head, even though Bart thinks
it's cool, and it ends up in the Simpson's basement.
(13:54):
The olmech Head would appear in the background in seventeen
other episodes, in The Simpsons movie, and in a video
game called The Simpsons Tapped Out. Just like the real
olmech Heads, the Simpsons version moves around a lot and
it eventually ends up in their yard Celle. No one
buys it, and it appears in later shows. In future episodes,
(14:18):
we may yet see a colossal Olmechs stonehead in the
basement of America's favorite cartoon family. Until then, archaeologists anxiously
await the discovery of the next real one. In the
Jungles of Mexico. Thank you once again for listening to
another episode of Mexico and Explain. Please remember to like
(14:41):
and subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Twitter.
Tell your friends by sharing these shows with others. Please
go to our website Mexico on explain dot com for references, illustrations,
and for free access to transcripts of past shows. Please
visit our patriot page and consider making a donation to
help the show. We appreciate your kind attention. Once again,
(15:04):
until next time, thank you and gracias.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
please check out our website at mexicoanexplained dot com, Like
us on Facebook and be a part of the conversation.
Addie on sand Haste la vista
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Viitto.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Welcome and we biu beneathos to episode number eighty of
Mexico Coon Explained, where we examined the magic, the mysteries
and the miracles of Mexico. I'm youre host, Robert Biddo.
The year was eighteen sixty nine. In a rather obscure
publication printed by the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics,
(01:17):
there appeared a short notice written by a man named
Jose Melgar. It was accompanied by an engraving of what
is now known as monument A at Tres Sapotes. Melga wrote,
in eighteen sixty two, I was in the region of
San Andres Tuchla, a town in the state of Veracruz, Mexico.
(01:39):
During my excursions, I learned that a colossal head had
been unearthed a few years before in the following manner.
Some one and a half leagues from a sugar cane
hacienda on the western slopes of the Sierra of San Martin,
a laborer of the hacienda, while cutting the forest for
his field, discovered on the surface of the ground what
(02:03):
looked like the bottom of a great iron kettle, turned
upside down. He notified the owner of the hacienda, who
ordered its excavation, and in the place of the kettle
was discovered the above mentioned head. It was left in
the excavation, as one would not think to move it,
being of granite and measuring two yards in height with
(02:25):
corresponding proportions. On my arrival at the hacienda, I asked
the owner of the property where the head was discovered
to take me to look at it. We went, and
I was struck with surprise. As a work of art,
it is, without exaggeration, a magnificent sculpture. What astonished me
(02:46):
was the Ethiopic type represented. I reflected that there had
undoubtedly been Negroes in this country, and that this had
been in the first epoch of the world. At the
time of Melgar's writings, most of Mexico's ancient past was
still shrouded in mystery. The writing system of the Maya
(03:07):
was a century from being deciphered. Many of the major
ruins that are familiar today were not even known of
or explored thoroughly. The scientific method as applied to archaeology,
which was not even a formally recognized discipline, was far
from being used. Lost cities in the jungle and rumors
(03:30):
of vanished civilizations fuelled much speculation about the origins of
ancient Mesoamerican peoples. At any given time during the nineteenth century,
the ancient Mexicans were said to have been ancient Assyrians,
prehistoric travelers from India, a lost tribe of Israel, shipwrecked Romans, and,
(03:52):
as Melgar speculated, black Africans. The features on that first olmechead,
found in eighteen fifty eight would puzzle investigators for quite
some time. It had a flat and wide nose, full lips,
and eyes without the characteristic fold found in Native Americans.
(04:14):
As the science of archaeology developed and more of these
heads were discovered, a clearer view of what would later
be called the Olmec civilization would come about. Melgar's head
would not be known outside of Mexico until nineteen o five,
when German archaeologist Edward Seller and his wife visited it,
(04:35):
and European newspapers picked up the story. It would be
the only colossal Ulmec's stone had known until the nineteen
twenty five discovery of the archaeological site of Laventa in
the modern Mexican state of Tabasco by a Danish born archaeologist,
Franz Blom and his American expedition partner Oliver LeFarge from
(04:58):
Tulane University. The two did not realize that they had
stumbled upon a lost city built by the members of
Mexico's oldest civilization, the Olmecs, and described Leventa as a
Maya syte. The term Olmec had been around since the
sixteenth century, but was not frequently used, and it was
(05:18):
not employed the way it is to day to denote
the mother of Mesoamerican civilizations that existed in the Mexican
Jungles from around twelve hundred BC to four hundred BC.
The term Olmec loosely translates to the rubber people or
people who live in the land of rubber. By the
nineteen thirties, the term began to be used when describing
(05:41):
the pre Maya people of the tropical lowlands, who built
large civic ceremonial centers and left behind thousands of intricate artifacts.
Matthew Sterling of the Smithsonian Institution discovered a dated inscription
at the site of Tresipotes in nineteen thirty nine, put
the city's heyday centuries before the Classic Maya civilization. By
(06:05):
the middle of the twentieth century, a more solid picture
began to emerge of what is known today as the
Olmec civilization, centered around three major sites on Mexico's Gulf coast,
Tresa Potes, Laventa, and San Lorenzo. The huge, disembodied stone
heads are perhaps the most famous hallmarks of the Olmec.
(06:28):
There are seventeen known Olmec colossal stone heads, the last
one discovered in nineteen ninety four. Ten were uncovered at
the site of San Lorenzo, four at Laventa, two at
Tresa Potes, and one at the small archaeological site of
Lacobata in the state of Veracruz. Outside these seventeen heads,
(06:50):
there has been discovered in tacalik A Baje, Guatemala, an
altar stone that may have been carved out of a
former Olmec head. Possible fragments of colossal heads have been
found in San Lorenzo at a much smaller site called
San Fernando in the state of Tabasco, made of basalt.
Each head measures approximately five to eleven feet tall and
(07:14):
weighs between six to fifty tons. Facial features are similar
among the heads, big lips, rounded cheeks, and broad noses.
Each head also wears what looks like a helmet or
head dress. While each Omec head is stylistically similar, each
piece is unique, almost with a specific personality, which leads
(07:37):
researchers to believe that these sculptures were made to represent
real rulers. Facial expressions of these heads generally tend to
be stern looking or expressionless. However, the head known as
Laventa monument Iwo, with its bunched cheeks and upturned lips,
is clearly smiling at the viewer. This is in stark
(07:59):
contrast to the first head discovered by Melgar in the
eighteen fifties, which has an expression of displeasure, almost a frown.
A case can also be made that these heads represented
rulers because of the sheer amount of resources it took
to make them. Quarry people, laborers, to move the stones, artists,
(08:21):
and other assorted workers took a lot of coordination and control,
and archaeologists theorize that the monumental sculptures would only have
been possible in a highly stratified, top down society. Besides,
the differences in the appearances of the heads suggest unique
individuals and not standard representations of the gods. With no
(08:46):
oral history or written records about these heads, it is
difficult to determine why they were made or how old
they actually are. Scholars generally date them to the height
of Olmec civilization, which was about nine hundred BC. Some
heads are dated by association by making assumptions about what
(09:06):
is found around them. This is often tricky, as many
of the heads clearly have been moved from their original locations,
possibly several times. As it is impossible to date carved stone,
researchers may never be able to determine exact dates of
these heads. As mentioned earlier, the stone heads were fashioned
(09:29):
from basalt. Researchers have determined that the stones used in
all seventeen known Olmec heads come from one source, the
Sierra de los Tuchelas in the state of Veracruz. On
the southern slopes of the mountains to this day are
large boulders made out of what is called Cerro Scynthepec basalt,
(09:51):
which ranges from a light to dark gray color. Those
boulders that were seen as head shaped were probably selected
for tra transport off the mountain. Some of these boulders
took a journey of almost one hundred miles to reach
the final destinations of the workshops in the major Olmec
urban centers. As the Olmechs had no beasts of burden
(10:15):
or no practical use of the wheel, one can only
imagine how these gigantic boulders were moved across hills, swamps,
and waterways. Basalt workshops have been discovered at San Lorenzo,
where the colossal boulders were most likely transformed into the
heads of kings. As the Olmechs had no metal tools,
(10:37):
the huge heads were fashioned by the use of stone tools.
Stone on stone, sand like abrasives were found in these workshops,
leading archaeologists to believe that in the final stages of sculpting,
the heads were smoothed out and finally finished. It must
have taken months to make just one head, if not longer,
(11:00):
and that does not include transport, which may have added
additional months to the project. Outside of mainstream archaeology, there
exists a separate field of scholarship devoted to the Olmec heads,
which concentrates on the out of Africa theory of the
origins of the Olmec. Much of the traditional archaeological literature
(11:21):
refers to the sculptures as having Negroid features. The discoverer
of the first olmechead, Jose Melgar, described it as having
Ethiopic features and assumed that a Black civilization once visited
ancient Mexico. Melgar's initial impressions are often cited by the
(11:41):
African ancestry revisionists. In Clyde Winter's book Atlantis in Mexico
and Ivan van Certema's They Came before Columbus the African
Presence in Ancient America, the authors make the case for
an ancient African civilization that had a kingdom in Mexico
a few thousand years ago. Not only do the authors
(12:05):
refer to the colossal stone heads and other artwork, they
refer to claims of African skeletons being found at some
Olmech sites. The evidence of the skeletons has been suppressed,
many alternative researchers claim, much like evidence for giants or
extraterrestrials has been suppressed. Besides rumors of skeletons and the
(12:28):
Olmech heads having Negroid features, there is very little to
this out of Africa theory, which gained momentum in the
nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies during the huge wave of
alternative theories about ancient Mexico. The fact that the modern
day natives of the Tabasco and Vera Cruz areas still
(12:48):
have the same features as those found on the colossal
stone heads, and they lack any African DNA is of
little consolation to a researcher inclined to think a certain way.
Until more tangible evidence comes to the surface of African contact,
most archaeologists are content to call the Olmechs the mother
(13:09):
civilization of ancient Mexico and see them as something uniquely
and altogether Mexican. A colossal Olmechs stone head even made
it into American popular culture on August eleventh, nineteen ninety one,
during the second season of the animated television series The Simpsons,
(13:30):
a show aired in which Bart saves mister Burns's life
with a blood transfusion. As a token of his appreciation,
mister Burns gives Bart a huge stone head, which he
calls Extapo Lapachttl, the ol mech God of War. The
family doesn't like the olmech Head, even though Bart thinks
it's cool, and it ends up in the Simpson's basement.
(13:54):
The olmech Head would appear in the background in seventeen
other episodes, in The Simpsons movie, and in a video
game called The Simpsons Tapped Out. Just like the real
olmech Heads, the Simpsons version moves around a lot and
it eventually ends up in their yard Celle. No one
buys it, and it appears in later shows. In future episodes,
(14:18):
we may yet see a colossal Olmechs stonehead in the
basement of America's favorite cartoon family. Until then, archaeologists anxiously
await the discovery of the next real one. In the
Jungles of Mexico. Thank you once again for listening to
another episode of Mexico and Explain. Please remember to like
(14:41):
and subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Twitter.
Tell your friends by sharing these shows with others. Please
go to our website Mexico on explain dot com for references, illustrations,
and for free access to transcripts of past shows. Please
visit our patriot page and consider making a donation to
help the show. We appreciate your kind attention. Once again,
(15:04):
until next time, thank you and gracias.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
please check out our website at mexicoanexplained dot com, Like
us on Facebook and be a part of the conversation.
Addie on sand Haste la vista
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