that were moved from a volcanic mountain in Mexico 100 miles southwards to
the La Velta region around 900 BCE, this great achievement by the Olmec
Culture can be compared with the puzzle of the 4-ton bluestones that were
carried from Wales to Stonehenge around 2400 BCE.
The subject of the Olmecs was treated in the documentary entitled THE OLMEC
HEADS on BBC 2 Saturday evening (9th December 2000, the film being a BBC
History Channel production made in 1999.
The Olmec civilisation at its height around 900 BCE. The people carved
heads, typically 2.5 metres tall, and weighing up to 30 tons apiece. In the
region of La Velta, in Southern Mexico, there are thousands of tons of
carved rocks, and 17 giant heads have been found.
This is a stupendous feat considering the hardness of the rocks, but more
remarkable is that, because the region is swampland and riddled with rivers,
there are NO natural rocks at all.
Archaeologists have established that the stones came from volcanic hills a
hundred miles to the north. They were pulled across rocky terrain, through
jungle and across swamps and wide rivers.
The Olmecs established the earliest civilisation of the Americas -- a
hierarchical society -- which knew how to produce rubber. A rubber ball,
bigger than a football, was found preserved in the mud, as also a baby's
skeleton (ref. Ponciano Ortiz). [Olmec means "Those who live in the Land of
Rubber"]. The mud also preserved 3000-year old carved wooden heads.
As regards the Stonehenge problem some specialists continue to insist that
the Welsh bluestones were transported to Stonehenge by glacier, not by man
(despite the glacier theory being disproved by geologists)? Supporters of
the Welsh glacier theory often claim that long-distance transport of
megaliths by man never happened anywhere in the world; but Mexico never had
a glacier-age climate so it seems that it was men who moved the megaliths in
Mexico -- and much of the journey took place over water. And so it could
have been for the bluestones that went to Stonehenge.
The Welsh Bluestone arises from the waters.