Page 132 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

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. In reality, despite the names we
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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.

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