• • • • •
The light of the full moon coming over the horizon glinted off the point of the long Holy Blade as it swung high into the air and down into the sleeping man’s chest. Again and again the blade swung up and down. Blood spattered everywhere, covering the Royal bed and the attacker with misty red spots.
When he stopped, the only noise was his heavy breathing, and the soft but steady sound of dripping as a dark red pool began to run onto the floor from the bloody and still body.
Then the assailant turned and ran out of the Royal chamber.
When he got outside the King’s abode, six young men were waiting for him. As he quickly walked up to them, they saw the blood covering their older brother. He stopped beside the group of siblings, and the bright moonlight reflected off the deep red stains covering his murderous blade. The closest brother to him spoke in a whisper.
“Is he…”
“It is done. We cannot stop now. You know what we must do. Did you bring the supplies?”
The oldest set of twin brothers looked at him with eyes that were perfectly synchronized and they answered in unison.
“Yes. We have them.”
The twin on the right held up several coils of ropes with curved metal ends like grappling hooks. “I have the ropes.”
His oldest brother looked at him hard. “Are they long enough? The ropes must reach the top or we cannot pull it over.”
The twin nodded. “I have measured them myself.”
Then his identical twin brother held out his arm. “And I have the blankets.”
“Good. Remember, once it is free from the cage, you must not touch it with your bare hands. Cover it with the blankets before you get too close.”
Both of the twins nodded. The oldest brother allowed himself a small smile. Then he turned to the other four young men.
His youngest brothers were also two sets of twins. According to their father, all twins were created by their God. Their God must have favored their father a lot because he only sired twins; four pairs to be exact. Unlike the oldest set of his young twin brothers, who were twenty-two, the youngest four were still teenagers at nineteen and sixteen. All the sets of twins were only three years apart, which according to their father was also ordained by their God. The oldest brother was twenty five, but his twin had died in birth. This made him the natural leader of his siblings, but left him with a hole in his life that he could not fill.
Until tonight.
When he looked at the four youngest members of his personal raiding party, they all held out their arms. Each of them was holding a long handled spade-like shovel used for digging in one hand. In their other hand, they each held a tall wooden pole with a long, thick metal rod on one end. After the inspection, the oldest brother turned and headed across the plaza then out away from the Royal City. The three sets of twins followed like a cloned entourage. They moved across the valley in silence and then crossed into the section of rocks that led up to the forbidden temple in the mountains. Except during ceremonies, no one but the King was allowed up here. Each of them knew the punishment for trespassing here without the King’s permission and escort. But they also knew there would be no punishment tonight; only success or death.
A few minutes later, they were approaching the steeple shaped cage in the large open rocky field near the steep drop-off edge of the mountaintop. Only the oldest brother had ever been here and seen it in person. The other six were awestruck; stopping and staring with wide eyes. It was beyond anything they had imagined about the fabled home of the God of their people.
The cage was made of iron strips that had been crossed over and under each other in a weaving pattern to create a tall pyramid shaped building made of metal. It resembled a gigantic cage built like a thin steeple. Layers of palm oil had been wiped on and then hand buffed into the interior and exterior surface of the cage twice weekly for millennia; polishing the metal to an almost mirrored smoothness. And it was the King himself, and his ancestors before him, who did this manual labor for his God.
But not any more.
The moon was high overhead, and the thick bars of iron glistened in the bright lunar light like a wireframe drawing done in luminescent ink. Inside the metal building, a short set of bars on the ground near the back wall held a small metal topped pedestal and were connected to the wall.
As they approached the temple, a light started emanating from on top of the pedestal; glowing like a miniature sun in the middle of the cage and making the entire temple suddenly seem alive.
The God of the Olmec knew they were here.
• • •
Like many lost ancient cultures, the Meso-Americans called the Olmec received that name long after they disappeared from the Earth.
The Olmec people were the primitive source genome for all of the great civilizations that followed on the North and South American continents and the strip of land between them. Known among the following great dynasties of the central and southern highlands of Meso-America as the ‘Old Ones,’ they came into existence over a thousand years before Alexander the Great and rose to prominence during the New Kingdom period of Egyptian Pharaonic dynasties. At the pinnacle of Olmec civilization, all of Europe was still equestrian-based small kingdoms.
They called themselves by a name that is long lost to the dust of time. But their name for themselves meant ‘Masters of the Red Rock.’
And masters they were. The red rock they named themselves for was iron ore. And when the rest of the world was banging iron into steel for blades in swords and knives, the Olmec had a different purpose. With only bronze age tools, they perfected the process for smelting and hardening iron. Using techniques handed down to them from unknown forefathers, the Olmec people developed the ironworking skills they would use to rise to absolute dominance in the early Meso-American world.
They were the first to use metal chisels to carve jade, which was the holiest of stones to them. These new tools allowed the Olmec artists to become the undisputed champions in the ancient New World art field. No later culture was ever able to equal the Olmec level of jade art.
But jade and iron were not the only arts the Olmec mastered. In 1967, Michael Coe found a magnet at San Lorenzo carved in the form of an oblong bar with a groove from the period of 1,000 BC. When Coe tested his hypothesis that this was a crude magnetic compass, which had been fashioned 1,000 years before the Chinese are credited with inventing such a device, he found he was right.
And the Olmec used these compasses to build incredible engineering feats. One of many complex drainage systems in Olmec territory was excavated that measured over five-hundred-and-fifty feet long with an almost perfect two-percent grade from east to west. Subsidiary lines stretched off the main tunnel for almost one-hundred feet in various places. The entire system was made from thirty tons of basalt rock that was quarried and hauled more than thirty-five miles to the final location. Stone covers had been fashioned to cover the channel, which ran for over a quarter of a mile in a perfectly straight line.
Modern scientists and archaeologists have no clue as to the purpose or function of this elaborate system of fire-proof rock flumes. But a modern glassmaker would recognize the purpose in an instant if they saw the structure as it was being used in the millennia before the Julian calendar was born. The technique for making perfect plate-glass sheets is not a product of the twentieth century after all. And the process of mirroring them isn’t, either. The Olmec people had mastered techniques of manufacturing that would not be seen again for two and three quarters millennia.
But the Olmec’s greatest achievement was in the art of iron. And it was the foundation of all the other arts and sciences they mastered. It was not only fundamental to their society, it was used daily by everyone from the peasantry to the landholding royalty. However, the real Olmec use for iron has remained unknown to this day by modern scholars. It has been well established that the ancient race of Central Americans were the first to develop writing and agriculture i
n this hemisphere. What was not known was how they were related and how the Olmec used their mastery of iron to achieve these high-points of social development.
The first was agriculture. The Olmec culture sprang into existence from a more ancient group that had inhabited the same area for many millennia. At the very bottom crook of the Gulf of Mexico, protected by the Yucatan peninsula on one side and the main Central American landmass on the other side, was the enormous river delta of the Coatzacoalcos river system. A massive drainage system for the southern end of the mountainous ridge that ran the length of North America and down through Mexico, it consisted of dozens of large tributaries and mangrove swamps connected to isolated lagoons and fresh-water flood plains.
Easily equal to the Nile river of Egypt, the annual rainfall would sometimes top one-hundred inches per year. Each season, the dozens of feeder rivers would flood twenty feet into the lowlands. But when the waters receded, they left behind a gift. Unlike agricultural techniques employed in less fertile areas, this land did not have to be cleared. The river would do it for you. Most importantly, the land did not have to lie fallow after a couple of seasons in order to recuperate from farming. Every year, the rains would deliver the soil and fertilizer to ensure a bountiful crop.
The Olmec used their skill at working iron to make shovels for planting and eventually a harvesting blade. Almost identical to the modern machete, this tool was what allowed the tribal leaders, who eventually staked ownership of these fertile plains, to unify and consolidate the various villages under their rule. Food for all ensured a compliant and satisfied population. In addition to harvesting, the machete design was the only useful tool for holding back the encroaching jungle.
The other principal use of iron was for writing. The Olmec Priests pounded and flattened iron plates into thin sheets. Then using preformed punches with uniform and fixed symbols, the art of writing in glyphs became widespread. These paper thin iron sheets were used to teach and pass on the skills the Olmec had accumulated over the centuries. And when rubbed with palm oil over generations, they lasted much better than any form of paper or papyrus in the wet and humid jungles. Iron picks, hammers, and chisels were used to increase the production of iron ore from mines the Olmec began working year round. Complex food distribution systems and ore transportation processes were added to new smelting and purifying centers, which the Olmec began to build across the fertile Southern Gulf lowlands.
And iron was what the Olmec traded to get their precious jade. There were no naturally occurring deposits of jade within the Olmec territories. All of it came from somewhere else, and there was a massive quantity of Olmec jade.
For almost a thousand years, this highly structured society existed in the fertile land of ‘The Iron Masters.’
And finally, the Olmec had one more use for iron that is still unknown today.
It was to serve their God.
For it was their God to which the Olmec owed all that they knew. The gifts of language, writing, agriculture and, most importantly, the gift of the mastery of the holy red stone, all came from the deity of the Olmec. Every succeeding New World culture owed these gifts to the Olmec people, but they owed them to the God that spoke from the burning bright light. The God that resided in the iron-cage, which was built to house and honor her by long lost forefathers. The God to whom they delivered the fine black powder made from the rock that burns. The God who had taught them to build pyramids in the jungle.
And the God who taught them to make the mirrors.
Modern scientists have no idea what the mirrors were for. Olmec art seemed to suggest that the ultra-polished concave disks of iron were worn as ornamentation around the necks of rulers. But that was not their purpose. The disks were all fashioned in the same location and over the same period of time. Modern archaeologists have determined the surviving examples of these enigmas of the ancient New World were built by the Olmec, but they readily admit they have no idea how it was actually done. Microscopic analysis reveals no signs of abrasives, yet the level of concave exactness and polish approaches perfection.
Near the end of the height of the Olmec civilization, the mirrors were all held in the same location by the greatest of the Olmec Kings. For twenty-nine generations, only the current ruling King was privileged to communicate with their God. And what the God commanded, the Kings never dared to disobey. Only in hushed whispers would anyone even speak of the rumored legends of the awesome displays of rage and power their God had rained down on the disobedient in the millennia since she was discovered in the clear rock.
Over those same millennia, their God had provided for the obedient.
Ancient New World Kings and Kingdoms rose and fell on the advice of the God in the Clear Rock.
And the number of those who knew of her true existence was never more than one teacher and one student.
Until now.
• • •
The last Great King the Olmec people would ever know had followed the orders of his God exactly. He had continued the large pyramid temple construction far away to the east, where the old ones from whom the Olmec sprung had begun millennia earlier. He had taught his people the skills of finding the red stone and removing it from the ground. His priests had used the iron sheets to spread knowledge and the art of writing across the domain of his people. They constructed the river-of-fire and made the magic flat stones that reflected the world. And his people were organized, fed, and cared for thanks to the tools, skills, and knowledge he passed on from his God about the plants that provided life from the Earth.
He had been a loyal and loving servant to his God.
So as the oldest of his seven sons murdered him while he slept, the last thought in his mind, when it snapped awake upon the first stab from the Holy Iron Blade, was that his God would reward him now that he would be joining her inside the magic stone; just as each of the former Kings before him had done.
The Great Olmec King would never know of the civil war that his untimely and incestuous murder would precipitate.
He would not witness the Royal treasure room being raided by brothers who fought and killed each other for their share of their dead father’s Kingdom.
He could not stop the mirrored disks from being divided up like spoils of some home-based war and then passed on by little tyrants as signs of the power of some long forgotten deity.
He was not there as the thick sheets of perfectly flat mirror were shattered over the iron-cage that once held his God.
Then that same iron-cage, which had been maintained and repaired by the Olmec for a thousand years before the time of Cleopatra, was toppled over and thrown into a deep hole along with the mountains of jade carvings made by the artisans of his people in honor of their beautiful God.
And finally, the clear slab of rock that held the voice and image of the Olmec God was also thrown into the hole. As dirt was thrown on top of the crystal-clear tablet of holy knowledge wrapped in dark blankets, a faint light shone briefly through the thick fabric. It continued to barely shine out past the first thin layer of dirt that landed on the bundle of abandoned religion. Then another mound of dirt landed on the blanket, and the God of the Olmec people was gone from the light of day.
As a whole nation and as a people, the Olmec would disappear within twenty-five years.
Small little kingdoms, branched off from the five sons who survived the assassination of the Great King, would still inhabit some of the grandest of the Olmec cities for the next six-hundred years or so. But thanks to the systematic destruction of the remains of their empire by the murderous sons of the last Great King of the Olmec, only the mass graves of jade art would remain as proof they were ever here.
The people known as the Masters of Iron were gone.
But neither the knowledge nor the God of the Olmec would stay gone.
It takes about three generations to forget. Individuals with direct knowledge and memory will pass it on to their children and their grandchildren. Afte
r that, memories fade and stories are lost.
Barely more than two generations would pass before the grave of the abandoned God would be robbed.
And the cycle of teaching and building would begin, again.
Although the rampage of the royal siblings led to the destruction and abandonment of everything their forefathers built and held dear and holy, the only thing ever taken from the hundreds of buried treasure stores of jade and Olmec art was the large crystal-clear tablet-shaped Stone of God.
Everything else was left where it lay in the mud.
All of the priceless and holy jade art, and all of the thin written iron sheets were left and reburied in the ground.
The magnificent iron cage, which was as large as a temple room, was left buried in the giant pit where it was thrown after being destroyed by the five brothers of sin that survived the initial military-style coup devised by their oldest sibling.
Over 2,850 years later when the site was excavated by Matthew Stirling, the 782 pieces of jade taken from this one hole were the only thing remaining.
All of the iron sheets, which contained the knowledge the Olmec had accumulated and passed on for twenty-nine generations, were only a dark-brown stain in the dirt, that was washed off of the jade treasures surrounding them. Even the plastic-like coating the Olmec had developed to preserve the iron Plates of Knowledge for the last hundred years of their existence could not withstand the ravages of time in a wet earth grave.
And the incredible workmanship that had been added to the majestic iron cage over the one-thousand years of their patronage was eventually lost to time and history as the Earth reclaimed its mineral child in irreversible and unstoppable chemical decomposition.
Only the jade treasure hoards of the great Olmec people and the God in the Clear Rock survived for long in the deep, dank holes.
And the jade did not matter to the people who dug up the God in the Clear Rock…
CHAPTER THREE
1544 AD – Mayan Yucatan,
Central America