Archaeologica.org

gunny wrote:Early 1960s the Houston Museum of Natural History had a head on display on the lawn outside. It was a mature negroid face with a cap or helmet. Talked to the director as a young geology major interested in how negroids came to central America. He brushed me off saying that these were overweight nobles or kings who had eaten too much.

Now of course we're told they were infants , it must be true because I read it right here on this thread.

Stylised infants but infants nonetheless.

Looks like a Sumo wrestler - or a Hawaian

Sam Salmon wrote:

gunny wrote:Early 1960s the Houston Museum of Natural History had a head on display on the lawn outside. It was a mature negroid face with a cap or helmet. Talked to the director as a young geology major interested in how negroids came to central America. He brushed me off saying that these were overweight nobles or kings who had eaten too much.

Now of course we're told they were infants , it must be true because I read it right here on this thread.

Stylised infants but infants nonetheless.

Please note:

Okay, maybe it's an idea rather than hard established fact but given that the features of these heads are overly large in proportion to the actual size of the cranium (consistent I would suggest with depictions of infants, itself consistent with the apparent Olmec fixation with infancy as evinced in their sculpture) I would question what qualifies your "absolute nonsense" remark.

As an idea I would daringly suggest it ain't a bad one (though on reflection the Olmec fixation with dwarfism might make more sense) compared to supposedly rival ideas for which there exists
NO EVIDENCE,
ideas which (I might add) appear to exist purely for the sake of an historical aesthetic and as such serve to explain nothing that actually lacks a more credible explanation.
Furthermore, I might point out that five pages in, thread once again derailed into fairy stories, and you STILL haven't actually said what you mean. All we've had so far (okay, all I've had) is overuse of the word nonsense, the usual Club invocation (...whatever ), blether about what I'd know if I had actually been there (and I have, and I'm beginning to suspect with more frequency than yourself, also I was PAYING ATTENTION when I visited) and that's it, so PLEASE can you just say what you actually mean?

Olmec heads depict Africans?
Boat guys in Mexico look like Olmec heads?
Boat guys in Mexico are African?

What?

I mean do you actually know any people of African descent?
I know plenty and not one of them has eyes that large as adults.

Might I also add that Rich's comment above contains more evidence of actual thought than you've displayed in this entire thread, although seeing as you're clearly just trolling me I don't suppose you'll be bothering HIM with your "wuh wuh wuh club predictable wuh wuh wuh ABSOLUTE NONSENSE" schtick now will you?

War Arrow wrote:....I mean do you actually know any people of African descent?

Yes I do, I live in an ethnically diverse city and in fact spent all day yesterday partying @ the Caribbean Festival in North Vancouver.

So sorry you're so discomfited, it had to happen though, always does.

Ok - how about this from way out in left field:

What's the possibility that the Olmecs (or even other people living in South America and Central America) travelled the world and when they came back sculpted images of peoples they saw around the world? It's just as feasible that way as the other. If peoples from Africa, Asia, and islands like Hawai travelled by sea so too from the Americas.
Just throwing this in as food for thought!!!
We tend to look at it as people came to the Americas from the north - why not that they left from the Americas after having been there from the islands (as some of the myths suggest).
Nah - that's too far gone I guess.[/u]

I have been reading the latest threads on the Olmec heads posted here. And I see references to the "club." And I figured out that those in the "club" are those who do not always agree on the more speculative theories out there on Olmec origins.

Many of the indigenous people on the Gulf Coast and many of the Maya related people further to the south where the Olmec artistic traditions began in pre-Maya times have flat noses and big lips. It is no stretch to see that the indigenous were carving themselves in a very heroic stylized fashion. They were carving rulers and had them all wearing ball players helmets since this was an aristocratic game of great import that all sons of the ruling class would have played. It has already been established that some of these heads were re-carved from earlier Olmec "altars" which presented various mythological themes and from the figurines that have been uncovered, were probably actually used as altars by Olmec rulers.

So am I in the "club?" If this means that I believe that the indigenous people of the Americas created their own cultures, then yes, I am in that "club." There are those who believe someone else did it for them. So they are in a different "club."

Perhaps it would be helpful to drop the ad hominems and proceed as objectively as possible to discuss these things.

Throwing around terms like the "club" obscures the issue since it is really meant as an insult of a kind and is not helpful to discussion.

Mike Ruggeri

Sam Salmon wrote:

War Arrow wrote:....I mean do you actually know any people of African descent?

So sorry you're so discomfited, it had to happen though, always does.

Again with the veiled response in lieu of the theory that dare not state its name. I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
I am discomfited?
What?
How?

No, on second thoughts - please don't trouble yourself to answer that. I am entirely past caring and have no interest in receiving any further mysterious or vaguely insulting one-liners from yourself.

I'm done.

michaelruggeri wrote:I have been reading the latest threads on the Olmec heads posted here. And I see references to the "club." And I figured out that those in the "club" are those who do not always agree on the more speculative theories out there on Olmec origins.

Not really. 'The Club' are those archaeologists who still hold out for Clovis First while stifling research at sites that show evidence of humans in the Americas before 13kya

....or the Egyptology Club which still maintains that the Sphinx was built by Khafre because it is "near" the Second Pyramid which they also attribute to Khafre for no good reason.

...or the Indology Club at Harvard who still insists that there was an Aryan migration into India in 1500 BC (their invasion theory having falling flat) despite not a shred of evidence in their favour and plenty against.

Minimalist wrote:....or the Egyptology Club which still maintains that the Sphinx was built by Khafre because it is "near" the Second Pyramid which they also attribute to Khafre for no good reason.

For shame, Min! They do have a good reason! It's because Khafre had a beard, and so does the Sphinx. QED!

Minimalist wrote:It's because Khafre had a beard, and so does the Sphinx. QED!

Excuse me? WHO has a beard?

They said on this programme on the telly that it was because the Sphinx had a beard!

Ask Min - he sent it to me.

Btw, couldn't you find a bigger picture?

Supposedly the beard fell off.

The beard probably would have proved that the Egyptians were really Vikings or something, therefore the Sphinx was sadly obliged to visit the ClubTM Barber Shop.