How do you steal something which weighs approximately one ton? Although neither of the subjects covered below involve our traditional definitions of petroglyphs, they are both carved stone.
“MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A massive stone sculpture carved by Olmec artists more than 2,000 years ago that evokes ancient religious beliefs has returned to Mexico after decades in the United States in a homecoming cheered by officials and scholars. Known today as the ‘Earth Monster,’ the sculpture was likely taken from central Mexico during the 1960s, spending time in the hands of private collectors as well as on public display before being seized by antiquities trafficking agents working with New York prosecutors.” (Garcia 2023)
“It’s a story straight out of an Indiana Jones movie: A one-ton stone carving made by the Olmecs – one of the first civilizations to appear in Latin America – will be returned to Mexico from its current location in Denver after being recovered by an ‘Antiquities Trafficking Unit’ based in Manhattan, New York. Much like the people who built it, the date for when the ‘Monstruo de la Tierra,’ aka Earth Monster, will be sent home remains a mystery, with Mexican officials promising to provide details on May 19. Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, ‘will discuss that on Friday,’ says Mary Lopez, spokesperson for the Mexican Consulate here in Denver. Information surrounding the stone carving’s location is being kept under wraps to ensure that it’s kept safe and sound before the move. Ebrard and other consulate members will visit Denver to oversee the repatriation of the relic, which landed in the Mile High City after it was stolen from its home in Chalcatzingo, in the Mexican State of Morelos south of Mexico City.” (Kelty 2023)
“It was carved from volcanic rock sometime between 800-400 BC during the heyday of the Olmec civilization, one of Mexico’s earliest complex societies with sites mostly clustered around the country’s Gulf Coast. The Olmecs are well-known for their advanced artistic tradition, including colossal head sculptures. The artifact depicts a mythological mountain and its stylized cave entrance in the form of a cross according to Mario Cordova, and Olmec archeologist who traveled to the United States as part of the recovery mission. The mountain was also made to resemble the head of a jaguar, ancient Mexico’s most fearsome predator, with the cave doubling as its open jaws and the entrance to the underworld.” (Garcia 2023) This is really a highly sophisticated example of imagery, combining the cave opening in a mountain side with the open mouth of a jaguar. Another example of the highly sophisticated Mesoamerican cultures.
“’The mountain-cave-mouth symbolic complex acquired a high iconographic value throughout Mesoamerica from very early times, giving rise over the millennia to increasingly complex sets of images’ according to a book written by the father-son scholarly duo Alfredo Lopez Austin and Leonardo Lopez Lujan, Lopez Lujan currently leads the excavations at the Aztec’s holiest shrine in downtown Mexico City.” (Garcia 2023)
“Caves were believed to be important portals to the underworld, and were often associated with water and fertility. Additionally, the images of branches of a bromeliad plant in the corner of the figure’s mouth are iconographic in the Chalcatzingo area.” (Pandey 2023)
But this part of the story ends well, with the mega-artifact returned to its rightful owners.
In another area of Olmec studies, however, there is a little more hubbub and emotion. The Olmec possessed a writing system consisting of glyphs, known as Epi-Olmec or Isthmian that look somewhat like Mayan writing, but it has been barely deciphered. In 1997 researchers Justeson and Kaufman claimed that they had successfully translated an Epi-Olmec inscription on Stele 1, in La Moharra in southern Veracruz, Mexico (see references below).
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“A badly weathered column of hieroglyphs was discovered in November 1995 on the side of Stela 1 from La Mojarra in southern Veracruz, Mexico. Most of the signs in this column have now been identified by nighttime examination under artificial lighting, making possible a nearly complete transcription and translation of this column. This data expands the modest corpus of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic texts and confirms various aspects of the decipherment of the epi-Olmec script.” (Justeson and Kaufman 1997) Except apparently the rest of the field do not agree.
This paper from BYU takes exception to the conclusions of Justeson and Kaufman, casting doubt on their claims and seemingly turns back the process to before their claims of translation of Epi-Olmec. “Translating the Isthmian script, the written form of one of the languages used in Mesoamerica from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, would be a tantalizing key to unlocking the mysteries of ancient American societies before the Maya. In 1993, two other scholars reported in the journal Science that they had deciphered the writing system, an assertion disputed in the new study, published in the new issue of the journal Mexicon. ‘This study subjects a claimed decipherment of an ancient New World script to rigid standards of proof, and shows that this script remains undeciphered,’ said Coe, author of the bestselling book ‘Breaking the Maya Code,’ in which he documented how he and others deciphered Maya hieroglyphs. ‘The inscriptions found on the mask amount to a 'test case' for the validity of the claimed decipherment,’ allowing researchers to apply purported meanings of symbols to a new inscription and see if the results make sense.” (BYU 2004)
“Overall, then, the case for the Justeson/Kaufman ‘decipherment’ of Isthmian is decidedly unproven and currently rests on shaky foundations … What it needs, more urgently than some other ‘decipherments’ given its evident linguistic sophistication, is the discovery of a new text or texts as substantial as the one found at La Mojarra in 1986.” (Wikipedia)
So, we still have a lot to learn about Olmec civilization, art, science, and writing, but we certainly have enough to appreciate the height and sophistication of their art, and by implication the richness of their culture.
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
BYU, 2004, Mesoamerican relic provides new clues to mysterious ancient writing system, 8 January 2004, https://news.byu.edu. Accessed online 3 July 2923.
Garcia, David Alire, 2023, Back in Mexico, ‘Earth Monster’ Sculpture Points to Ancient Beliefs, 26 May 2023, https://www.usnews.com. Accessed online 18 July 2023.
Justeson, John S. and Terrence Kaufman, 1997, A Newly Discovered Column in the Heiroglyphic Text on La Mojarra Stela 1: A Test of the Epi-Olmec Decipherment, Science, Vol. 277, No. 5323, 11 July 1997, pp. 207-210. Accessed online 3 July 2023.
Kelty, Bennitol, 2023, Long-Lost ‘Earth Monster’ Olmec Head Found in Denver, Now Destined for Mexico, 17 May 2023, https://www.westword.com. Accessed 20 May 2023.
News.byu.edu, 2004, Mesoamerican relic provides new clues to mysterious ancient writing system, 8 January 2004, https://news.byu.edu/. Accessed online 3 July 2023.
Pandey, Sahir, 2023, Mexican Government Recovers One Ton Olmec Statue of Earth Monster, 4 April 2023, https://www.ancient-origins.net. Accessed online 18 July 2023.
Wikipedia, Isthmian script, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_script.
Accessed online 3 July 2023.
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