Page 124 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 16

Serpent Sanctuary

From Cholula we drove east, past the prosperous cities of Puebla, Orizaba
and Cordoba, towards Veracruz and the Gulf of Mexico. We crossed the
mist-enshrouded peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental, where the air was
thin and cold, and then descended towards sea level on to tropical plains
overgrown with lush plantations of palms and bananas. We were heading
into the heartlands of Mexico’s oldest and most mysterious civilization:
that of the so-called Olmecs, whose name meant ‘rubber people’.
Dating back to the second millennium BC, the Olmecs had ceased to
exist fifteen hundred years before the rise of the Aztec empire. The
Aztecs, however, had preserved haunting traditions concerning them and
were even responsible for naming them after the rubber-producing area
of Mexico’s gulf coast where they were believed to have lived. This area
1
lies between modern Veracruz in the west and Ciudad del Carmen in the
east. In it the Aztecs found a number of ancient ritual objects produced
by the Olmecs and for reasons unknown they collected these objects and
placed them in positions of importance in their own temples.
2
Looking at my map, I could see the blue line of the Coatzecoalcos River
running into the Gulf of Mexico more or less at the midpoint of the
legendary Olmec homeland. The oil industry proliferates here now, where
rubber trees once flourished, transforming a tropical paradise into
something resembling the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno. Since the oil
boom of 1973 the town of Coatzecoalcos, once easy-going but not very
prosperous, had mushroomed into a transport and refining centre with
air-conditioned hotels and a population of half a million. It lay close to
the black heart of an industrial wasteland in which virtually everything of
archaeological interest that had escaped the depredations of the Spanish
at the time of the conquest had been destroyed by the voracious
expansion of the oil business. It was therefore no longer possible, on the
basis of hard evidence, to confirm or deny the intriguing suggestion that
the legends seemed to make: that something of great importance must
once have occurred here.

1 The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, p. 126.
2 Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendour, p. 50.

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