the archaeological work done at La Venta before progress and oil money

  erased it. Carbon-dating suggested that the Olmecs had established

  themselves here between 1500 and 1100 BC and had continued to occupy

  the site—which consisted of an island lying in marshes to the east of the

  Tonala river—until about 400 BC.9 Then construction was suddenly

  abandoned, all existing buildings were ceremonially defaced or

  demolished, and several huge stone heads and other smaller pieces of

  sculpture were ritually buried in peculiar graves, just as had happened at

  San Lorenzo. The La Venta graves were elaborate and carefully prepared,

  lined with thousands of tiny blue tiles and filled up with layers of

  multicoloured clay.10 At one spot some 15,000 cubic feet of earth had

  been dug out of the ground to make a deep pit; its floor had been

  carefully covered with serpentine blocks, and all the earth put back.

  Three mosaic pavements were also found, intentionally buried beneath

  several alternating layers of clay and adobe.11

  La Venta’s principal pyramid stood at the southern end of the site.

  Roughly circular at ground level, it took the form of a fluted cone, the

  rounded sides consisting of ten vertical ridges with gullies between. The

  pyramid was 100 feet tall, almost 200 feet in diameter and had an overall

  8 The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, p. 30.

  9 Ibid., p. 31.

  10 The Prehistory of the Americas, pp. 268-9.

  11 Ibid., p. 269.

  129

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  mass in the region of 300,000 cubic feet—an impressive monument by

  any standards. The remainder of the site stretched for almost half a

  kilometre along an axis that pointed precisely 8° west of north. Centred

  on this axis, with every structure in flawless alignment, were several

  smaller pyramids and plazas, platforms and mounds, covering a total

  area of more than three square miles.

  There was something detached and odd about La Venta, a sense that its

  original function had not been properly understood. Archaeologists

  referred to it as a ‘ceremonial centre’, and very probably that is what it

  was. If one were honest, however, one would admit that it could also have

  been several other things. The truth is that nothing is known about the

  social organization, ceremonies and belief systems of the Olmecs. We do

  not know what language they spoke, or what traditions they passed to

  their children. We don’t even know what ethnic group they belonged to.

  The exceptionally humid conditions of the Gulf of Mexico mean that not a

  single Olmec skeleton has survived.12 In reality, despite the names we

  have given them and the views we’ve formed about them, these people

  are completely obscure to us.

  It is even possible that the enigmatic sculptures ‘they’ left behind,

  which we presume depicted them, were not ‘their’ work at all, but the

  work of a far earlier and forgotten people. Not for the first time I found

  myself wondering whether some of the great heads other remarkable

  artefacts attributed to the Olmecs might not have been handed down like

  heirlooms, perhaps over many millennia, to the cultures which eventually

  began to build the mounds and pyramids at San Lorenzo and La Venta.

  Reconstruction of La Venta. Note the unusual fluted-cone pyramid

  that dominates the site.

  If so, then who are we speaking of when we use the label ‘Olmec’? The

  mound-builders? Or the powerful and imposing men with negroid

  features who provided the models for the monolithic heads?

  Fortunately some fifty pieces of ‘Olmec’ monumental sculpture,

  including three of the giant heads, were rescued from La Venta by Carlos

  Pellicer Camara, a local poet and historian who intervened forcefully when

  12 The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, p. 28.

  130

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  he discovered that oil-drilling by the PEMEX company jeopardized the

  ruins. By determined lobbying of the politicians of Tabasco (within which

  La Venta lies), he arranged to have the significant finds moved to a park

  on the outskirts of the regional capital Villahermosa.

  Taken together these finds constitute a precious and irreplaceable

  cultural record—or rather a whole library of cultural records—left behind

  by a vanished civilization. But nobody knows how to read the language of

  these records.

  Above left: Profile view of the head of the Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt.

  Above right: Profile view of Olmec Head from La Venta, Mexico. Below

  left: Front view of the head of the Sphinx. Below right: Front view of

  Olmec Head. Compare also opposite page, top left: Sphinx-like Olmec

  sculpture from San Lorenzo, Mexico. Is it possible that the many

  similarities between the cultures of pre-Columbian Central America

  and Ancient Egypt could have stemmed from an as-yet-unidentified

  ‘third-party’ civilization that influenced both widely separated

  regions at a remote and early date?

  131

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Centre: Double-puma statue at Uxtnal, Mexico. Bottom: Double-lion

  132

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  symbolism from Ancient Egypt, depicting the Akeru, lion gods of

  yesterday and today ( Akeru was written in hieroglyphs as

  ). The

  religions of both regions share many other common images and

  ideas. Also noteworthy is the fact that p’achi, the Central American

  word for ‘human sacrifice’, means, literally ‘to open the mouth’—

  which calls to mind a strange Ancient Egyptian funerary ritual known

  as ‘the opening of the mouth’. Likewise it was believed in both

  regions that the souls of dead kings were reborn as stars.

  Deus ex machina

  Villahermosa, Tabasco province

  I was looking at an elaborate relief that had been dubbed ‘Man in

  Serpent’ by the archaeologists who found it at La Venta. According to

  expert opinion it showed ‘an Olmec, wearing a head-dress and holding an

  incense bag, enveloped by a feathered serpent’.13

  The relief was carved into a slab of solid granite measuring about four

  feet wide by five feet high and showed a man sitting with his legs

  stretched out in front of him as though he were reaching for pedals with

  his feet. He held a small, bucket-shaped object in his right hand. With his

  left he appeared to be raising or lowering a lever. The ‘head-dress’ he

  wore was an odd and complicated garment. To my eye it seemed more

  functional than ceremonial, although I could not imagine what its

  function might have been. On it, or perhaps on a console above it, were

  two x-shaped crosses.

  I turned my attention to the other principal element of the sculpture,

  13 The Cities of Ancient Mexico, p. 37.

  133

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  the ‘feathered serpent’. On one level it did, indeed, depict exactly that: a

  plumed or feathered serpent, the age-old symbol of Quetzalcoatl, whom

  the Olmecs, therefore, must have worshipped (or at the
very least

  recognized). Scholars do not dispute this interpretation.14 It is generally

  accepted that Quetzalcoatl’s cult was immensely ancient, originating in

  prehistoric times in Central America and thereafter receiving the devotion

  of many cultures during the historic period.

  The feathered serpent in this particular sculpture, however, had certain

  characteristics that set it apart. It seemed to be more than just a religious

  symbol; indeed, there was something rigid and structured about it that

  made it look almost like a piece of machinery.

  Whispers of ancient secrets

  Later that day I took shelter in the giant shadow cast by one of the Olmec

  heads Carlos Pellicer Camara had rescued from La Venta. It was the head

  of an old man with a broad flat nose and thick lips. The lips were slightly

  parted, exposing strong, square teeth. The expression on the face

  suggested an ancient, patient wisdom, and the eyes seemed to gaze

  unafraid into eternity, like those of the Great Sphinx at Giza in lower

  Egypt.

  It would probably be impossible, I thought, for a sculptor to invent all

  the different combined characteristics of an authentic racial type. The

  portrayal of an authentic combination of racial characteristics therefore

  implied strongly that a human model had been used.

  I walked around the great head a couple of times. It was 22 feet in

  circumference, weighed 19.8 tons, stood almost 8 feet high, had been

  carved out of solid basalt, and displayed clearly ‘an authentic

  combination of racial characteristics’. Indeed, like the other pieces I had

  seen at Santiago Tuxtla and at Tres Zapotes, it unmistakably and

  unambiguously showed a negro.

  The reader can form his or her own opinion after examining the

  relevant photographs in this book. My own view is that the Olmec heads

  present us with physiologically accurate images of real individuals of

  negroid stock—charismatic and powerful African men whose presence in

  Central America 3000 years ago has not yet been explained by scholars.

  Nor is there any certainty that the heads were actually carved in that

  epoch. Carbon-dating of fragments of charcoal found in the same pits

  tells us only the age of the charcoal. Calculating the true antiquity of the

  heads themselves is a much more complex matter.

  It was with such thoughts that I continued my slow walk among the

  strange and wonderful monuments of La Venta. They whispered of

  ancient secrets—the secret of the man in the machine ... the secret of the

  14 The Prehistory of the Americas, p. 270.

  134

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  negro heads ... and, last but not least, the secret of a legend brought to

  life. For it seemed that flesh might indeed have been put on the mythical

  bones of Quetzalcoatl when I found that several of the La Venta

  sculptures contained realistic likenesses not only of negroes but of tall,

  thin-featured, long-nosed, apparently Caucasian men with straight hair

  and full beards, wearing flowing robes ...

  135

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Chapter 18

  Conspicuous Strangers

  Matthew Stirling, the American archaeologist who excavated La Venta in

  the 1940s, made a number of spectacular discoveries there. The most

  spectacular of all was the Stele of the Bearded Man.

  The plan of the ancient Olmec site, as I have said, lay along an axis

  pointing 8° west of north. At the southern end of this axis, 100 feet tall,

  loomed the fluted cone of the great pyramid. Next to it, at ground level,

  was what looked like a curb about a foot high enclosing a spacious

  rectangular area one-quarter the size of an average city block. When the

  archaeologists began to uncover this curb they found, to their surprise,

  that it consisted of the upper parts of a wall of columns. Further

  excavation through the undisturbed layers of stratification that had

  accumulated revealed that the columns were ten feet tall. There were

  more than 600 of them and they had been set together so closely that

  they formed a near-impregnable stockade. Hewn out of solid basalt and

  transported to La Venta from quarries more than sixty miles distant, the

  columns weighed approximately two tons each.

  Why all this trouble? What had the stockade been built to contain?

  Even before excavation began, the tip of a massive chunk of rock had

  been visible jutting out of the ground in the centre of the enclosed area,

  about four feet higher than the illusory ‘curb’ and leaning steeply

  forward. It was covered with carvings. These extended down, out of sight,

  beneath the layers of soil that filled the ancient stockade to a height of

  about nine feet.

  Stirling and his team worked for two days to free the great rock. When

  exposed it proved to be an imposing stele fourteen feet high, seven feet

  wide and almost three feet thick. The carvings showed an encounter

  between two tall men, both dressed in elaborate robes and wearing

  elegant shoes with turned-up toes. Either erosion or deliberate mutilation

  (quite commonly practised on Olmec monuments) had resulted in the

  complete defacement of one of the figures. The other was intact. It so

  obviously depicted a Caucasian male with a high-bridged nose and a

  long, flowing beard that the bemused archaeologists promptly christened

  it ‘Uncle Sam’.1

  I walked slowly around the twenty-ton stele, remembering as I did so

  that it had lain buried in the earth for more than 3000 years. Only in the

  brief half century or so since Stirling’s excavations had it seen the light of

  day again. What would its fate be now? Would it stand here for another

  1 Fair Gods and Stone Faces, p. 144.

  136

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  thirty centuries as an object of awe and splendour for future generations

  to gawp at and revere? Or, in such a great expanse of time, was it

  possible that circumstances might change so much that it would once

  again be buried and concealed?

  Perhaps neither would happen. I remembered the ancient calendrical

  system of Central America, which the Olmecs had initiated. According to

  them, and to their more famous successors the Mayas, there just weren’t

  any great expanses of time left, let alone three millennia. The Fifth Sun

  was all used up and a tremendous earthquake was building to destroy

  humanity two days before Christmas in AD 2012.

  I turned my attention back to the stele. Two things seemed to be clear:

  the encounter scene it portrayed must, for some reason, have been of

  immense importance to the Olmecs, hence the grandeur of the stele

  itself, and the construction of the remarkable stockade of columns built

  to contain it. And, as was the case with the negro heads, it was obvious

  that the face of the bearded Caucasian man could only have been

  sculpted from a human model. The racial verisimilitude was too good for

  an artist to have invented it.

  The same went for two other Caucasian figures I was able to identify

  among the surviving monuments from La Venta
. One was carved in low

  relief on a heavy and roughly circular slab of stone about three feet in

  diameter. Dressed in what looked like tight-fitting leggings, his features

  were those of an Anglo-Saxon. He had a full pointed beard and wore a

  curious floppy cap on his head. In his left hand he extended a flag, or

  perhaps a weapon of some kind. His right hand, which he held across the

  middle of his chest, appeared to be empty. Around his slim waist was tied

  a flamboyant sash. The other Caucasian figure, this time carved on the

  side of a narrow pillar, was similarly bearded and attired.

  Who were these conspicuous strangers? What were they doing in

  Central America? When did they come? And what relationship did they

  have with those other strangers who had settled in this steamy rubber

  jungle—the ones who had provided the models for the great negro

  heads?

  Some radical researchers, who rejected the dogma concerning the

  isolation of the New World prior to 1492, had proposed what looked like

  a viable solution to the problem: the bearded, thin-featured individuals

  could have been Phoenicians from the Mediterranean who had sailed

  through the Pillars of Hercules and across the Atlantic Ocean as early as

  the second millennium BC. Advocates of this theory went on to suggest

  that the negroes shown at the same sites were the ‘slaves’ of the

  Phoenicians, picked up on the coast of West Africa prior to the transAtlantic run.2

  The more consideration I gave to the strange character of the La Venta

  sculptures, the more dissatisfied I became with these ideas. Probably the

  2 Ibid., p. 141-42.

  137

  Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

  Phoenicians and other Old World peoples had crossed the Atlantic ages

  before Columbus. There was compelling evidence for that, although it is

  outside the scope of this book.3 The problem was that the Phoenicians,

  who had left unmistakable examples of their distinctive handiwork in

  many parts of the ancient world,4 had not done so at the Olmec sites in

  Central America. Neither the negro heads, nor the reliefs portraying

  bearded Caucasian men showed any signs of anything remotely

  Phoenician in their style, handiwork or character.5 Indeed, from a stylistic

  point of view, these powerful works of art seemed to belong to no known