Page 125 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

The Olmec sites of Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo and La Venta along the
Gulf of Mexico, with other Central American archaeological sites.
I remembered that Coatzecoalcos meant ‘Serpent Sanctuary’. It was
here, in remote antiquity, that Quetzalcoatl and his companions were said
to have landed when they first reached Mexico, arriving from across the
sea in vessels ‘with sides that shone like the scales of serpents’ skins’.
3
And it was from here too that Quetzalcoatl was believed to have sailed
(on his raft of serpents) when he left Central America. Serpent Sanctuary,
moreover, was beginning to look like the name for the Olmec homeland,
which had included not only Coatzecoalcos but several other sites in
areas less blighted by development.
First at Tres Zapotes, west of Coatzecoalcos, and then at San Lorenzo
and La Venta, south and east of it, numerous pieces of characteristically
Olmec sculpture had been unearthed. All were monoliths carved out of
basalt and similarly durable materials. Some took the form of gigantic
heads weighing up to thirty tons. Others were massive stelae engraved
with encounter scenes apparently involving two distinct races of mankind,
neither of them American-Indian.
Whoever had produced these outstanding works of art had obviously
belonged to a refined, well organized, prosperous and technologically
advanced civilization. The problem was that absolutely nothing remained,
except the works of art, from which anything could be deduced about the
character and origins of that civilization. All that seemed clear was that
‘the Olmecs’ (the archaeologists were happy to accept the Aztec
designation) had materialized in Central America around 1500 BC with
their sophisticated culture fully evolved.

3 Fair Gods and Stone Faces, pp. 139-40.

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