Chapter 7: Out of Africa

Did West Africans Precede the Spaniards to America?

Evidence for West Africans in the New World before the Conquistadors arrived has been steadily accumulating ever since their leader, Hernan Cortez, landed on the eastern shores of Mexico, five centuries ago. They appear to have been long preceded by ancestors of the same race shackled in the fetid bowels of Spanish slave-ships. But as Willard P. Leutze pointed out in his article for Ancient Americans April/May, 1996 issue, blacks not only populated Mexico in pre-Columbian times, but, in sharp contrast to their 16th-century plight, were sometimes elevated to god-status.

Ancient Americans: Red or Black? by Willard P. Leutze

The shortest distance across the Atlantic is from West Africa to the eastward bulge of South America. Any raft or canoe caught by ocean currents off the coast of West Africa will be carried inexorably to the eastern shores of America. Dr. Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra-II Expedition of 1971 dramatically demonstrated the transatlantic power of these currents and affirmed that an ancient American landfall from Africa was not only possible, but probable. Less adventurous, conventional archaeologists sniffed that the only thing he proved was that Norwegians made good sailors. In point of fact, however, Heyerdahl showed that virtually any waterborne craft shoving off from the North Atlantic shores of Africa would inevitably enter the Caribbean.

His was essentially the same transatlantic route Christopher Columbus used to “discover” the New World, less than 500 years before. Similar voyages were immediately undertaken after him. Spanish sailors referred to this mid-ocean crossing as the “Sea of Ladies” for its tranquil, unchallenging passage. By either accident or design, it stands to reason that, in time, some West African living on the shores fronting this peaceful, direct current would have survived a voyage to Mexico or South America.

Physical evidence for this supposition has been found in abundance by a German anthropologist. Beginning in the 1960s, Alexander von Wuethenau collected dozens of Mesoamerican clay and stone effigies clearly meant to depict Negroes. These finds were critically scrutinized by renowned archaeologist J. Erik Thompson as part of the peer review process. He concluded that von Wuethenau’s figures represented travelers engaged in commerce. Thompson stated that the Maya god of merchants was Ek, or “black,” Chuah. This immortal was also the divine patron of chocolate,

because cocoa beans were valued as universal among the Maya, who associated them with traders. The Maya were additionally fond of word-plays, and to have a dark-skinned deity as the god of chocolate struck them as entirely appropriate. They, of course, made books of bark illuminated with illustrated glyphs and had great libraries documenting the arts, sciences, and histories of their civilization. Among the pitifully few volumes to escape the fires of Christian intolerance were what came to be known as the Dresden and Madrid Codices. Both works feature painted images of a black man with decidedly African facial features carrying a spear. He has been identified as Ek Chuah by William Gates, translator of Bishop Diego de Landa’s 16th-century Yucatan Before and After the Conquest.

According to Ann A. Morris, in her multi-volume description of The Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza, the interior painting of a man was “all too typical of the Negro, and unlike the Maya to be readily taken for accident.”

That blacks were still present in remote corners of Middle and Central America when early Spanish explorers arrived is attested by Pedro Martir, Spain’s court historian, in 1530. Describing the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, he quotes Nunez de Balboa saying that, at the Isthmus of Panama, he and his fellow Spaniards “met Negro slaves from a region where nothing but Negroes are bred, who are ferocious and extraordinarily cruel. We believe that in former times Negroes, who were out for robbery, navigated from Africa and, being shipwrecked, established themselves in these mountains. The Indians have internal fights full of hatred with the Negroes.” However, mainstream archaeologists and conventional historians believe the existence of West African blacks in America dates back at least as far in time as the Mayas, who flourished from 200 B.C. to 900 A.D. Indeed, at least enough of these “native” American Negroes were still in existence to be personally observed by Balboa and his fellow Conquistadors. It would seem, then that black history

in America did not begin with slave ships of the 16th century, but under less shameful circumstances, enough for the deification of a Negro man as the god of commerce, in the far deeper past.

Terra-cotta Heads

Assertions that blacks resided in North America long before Renaissance Europeans arrived are based on more than myth or hearsay. Physical evidence exists in the form of two pre-Columbian portraits owned by a prominent Mexican museum, as described in the June/July, 1996 issue of Ancient American.

West African in Prehistoric Mexico by Diane Wirth

Mexico’s Museo de Antropologia de Jalapa showcases two pre-Columbian works of art that appear to portray individuals of West African origins. Both terra-cotta heads have large lips and flared noses, features not found among Middle America’s indigenous populations. One head is either bald or shaven, another anomalous trait, because baldness is not a genetic characteristic common to native American Indians. Nor was shaving hair from the entire head, a custom not indulged in by Mesoamerican cultures. The face of the other figure wearing a cap shows evidence of deliberate scarification, a ritual practice known to many tribes of Africa’s Gold Coast, but never in pre-Columbian Mexico. Curators were unable to provide any further information about the two heads, which are clearly of negroid race: The terra-cotta itself has been fired black.

The facial features of these Mesoamerican terra-cotta heads cannot be misconstrued as typically "Indian. "

Both museum pieces share a room with other sculptures from the Veracruz area, on the Atlantic coast, where ships following the Canary Island Current sweeping across the mid-Atlantic from West Africa would have been carried into the Gulf of Mexico from Ghana or Senegal. In any case, numerous other portraits of West Africans in Mesoamerica were reproduced by the German anthropologist, Alexander von Wuethenau, during the 1960s and 1970s. Although some of his photographs were made of sculptures from private collections and cannot, therefore, be verified, his book, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, publishes black and white photographs of the same terra-cotta heads still on public display at the Jalapa Museum. There can be no question as to their authenticity. They are abundant physical proof for the presence of West African blacks in Mexico long before the arrival of modern Europeans during the early 16th century.

Human Head Sculptures

Colossal human heads of sculpted stone have been dug out of the ground in northeastern Mexico since the early 1860s. They are outstanding not only because of their stark realism, but for the unmistakably African features of the faces they portray. What can explain the monumental depiction of these men from the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean? An article in the January/February, 1995 issue of Ancient American attempted to answer that continues to bedevil archaeologists, professional and amateur alike.

The Great Stone Heads Speak by Frank Joseph

Nearly 150 years ago, the head of a stone giant was unearthed in a jungle near the Mexican town of Tres Zapotes. Even more striking than its huge proportions or the excellence of its workmanship was the face, obviously the portrait of a real person, but unlike any Native American. Instead, it bore the unmistakable features of a black African. Since that first amazing discovery, an additional 17 examples have been excavated, mostly around the ancient ceremonial center with its volcano-like earth-mound at San Lorenzo, in southern Vera Cruz.

Although not uniform in dimensions, weight, or even the individuals they depict, all were executed on a titanic scale in basalt, a stone not found locally. The nearest source lies among the Tuxtla Mountains, where archaeologists uncovered an unfinished head, proof that the huge portraits were sculpted there, then transported, incredibly, more than 50 miles to San Lorenzo. The largest specimen stands 9 feet tall and weighs 40 tons. All the heads were produced by the Olmecs, founders of the oldest Mesoamerican Civilization, which flourished from 1500 to 800 B.C.

Unable to deny the African facial features of the great heads, early researchers concluded they were portraits of blacks brought by Arabs and sold as slaves to the Olmecs. Others wondered if the monumental sculpture represented African warriors from Atlantis. Recoiling from any suggestion of transatlantic influences, post-World War Two archaeologists simply denied the obvious. They insisted that the black stone faces were not negroid at all, but typically Amerindian. Only some of the features, they guessed, had been purposely flattened to facilitate transportation, a process that inadvertently gave the portraits a vaguely African appearance. By the 1970s, some anti-Establishment investigators claimed that the colossal artwork depicted black royalty from Egypt or tribal chiefs from Ghana, who became the African culture-bearers and ruling elite of Mesoamerica’s premiere civilization.

It seems clear that these interpretations of the Olmec heads are racially and politically motivated theories, which more reflect the times in which they were current than any truly honest, unbiased, or straight-forward attempts at a solution. The scientists (Mexicans, North Americans, and Europeans) who studied the Tres Zapotes’ finds, beginning in 1862, could not believe blacks were capable of producing anything even remotely civilized, anywhere, at anytime, and so naturally assumed the heads were depictions of slaves. But no one would go to the extremes of labor in sculpting, transporting over many miles, and setting up 40-ton memorials to the lowest-ranking people in society. And after the date-parameters of Olmec Civilization were determined, any speculation about Arab traders had to be discarded.

The fouth century B.C. Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote that Atlantis was a multi-racial state in its last days, but outside of this single reference to non-Atlanteans at the island-civilization, nothing in any of the abundant literature on the subject connects blacks

with the sunken capital. Although the re-adjusted date for the final destruction of Atlantis, 1198 B.C., coincides with a sudden florescence in Olmec Civilization, the first of the stone heads was not sculpted until almost 300 years later.

Entirely theoretical assumptions that the sculpted faces were intentionally flattened to avoid chipping or breakage during removal from the Tuxtla Mountains are handily dismissed by one stone head in particular on display during the 1992 traveling exhibit staged by Mexico City’s Anthropological Museum at the Chicago Art Institute of Chicago. The visiting specimen had a long, protruding nose and sharp edges to the facial features.

Dogmatic isolationists are emotionally unequipped to consider any foreign contacts in pre-Columbian America, and are, consequently, so heavily into denial, they reject the evidence of their own eyes. That the giant heads nonetheless depict black men is self-evident, not only in the deliberate portrayal of facial features, but in the ancient sculptor’s choice of the medium used; namely, black basalt. Nor are the stone heads the only Mesoamerican representations of identifiably black African personages. They appear throughout stele carvings and statues in the round, with the best and most numerous examples on public display at La Venta Park, in Villahermosa. Although the majority of these portrayals of blacks in ancient Mexico are found in Olmec art, other outstanding specimens include the Vera Cruz carving of a black African head with closed eyes; the ceramic head of a woman with undeniably negroid features, found at the great pyramid-capital of Teotihuacan; and Toltec obsidian ware from Tula representing a negro boy as cup-bearer. Such abundant cultural evidence was underscored by the bones of negroes identified by the Polish forensic scholar, Andrzej Wiercinski, at Monte Alban, Tlatilco, and Cerro de las Mesas, important archaeological sites in Mexico. These human remains establish beyond doubt that blacks inhabited Middle America in pre-Columbian times.

But how did they get there, and when? The Florida researcher, Kenneth Caroli, offers evidence to show that Olmec Mexico might have been the legendary Punt (later known as King Solomon’s Ophir), a distant land of fabulous wealth visited by expeditions ordered at Pharaoh’s command. Were the blacks traveling as sailors, warriors, or even royalty, memorialized by the great stone heads? Indeed, trends to popularize Ancient Egypt as a black African civilization occur throughout America’s entertainment media and even our schools.

Such a characterization is contradicted by the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti and the two best-known pharaohs—Ramses II, whose well-preserved mummy has thin, red hair, and Tutankhamun, a blond. Indeed, Tutankhamun’s tomb included palace furniture that portrayed Negroes as servile or conquered, such as a rocking chair that shows a black captive bound to the rocker itself. On the soles of the king’s sandals were depicted blacks, which Pharaohs could forever tread upon. Pygmies, the only blacks apparently welcome in Egyptian society, were highly valued as entertainers. According to A.A. Sayce, a classic authority on the subject, the dynastic inhabitants of the Nile Valley were a Caucasian people, short and sturdy of stature, with fine, brunette hair, often grey-eyed. Of essentially Hamitic stock, they were a homogeneous blend of what W.B. Emery, the distinguished excavator of Saqqara, called “the Master Race,” a mysterious people (remembered as the Smsu-Hr, or “Followers of Horus”), who suddenly arrived from the west, settling in the Nile Valley around 3100 B.C.

Later, in the New Kingdom, with the imperialist expansion of Ramses II, significant numbers of foreigners began to become part of the native population for the first time. Particularly during the XXIInd through the XXIVth Dynasties, when native Egyptians could not even sit on the throne, the flood gates of immigration were thrown open, so that, by the time Egypt was reduced to a Roman province

under Caesar Augustus, one could no longer speak of an “Egyptian people” any longer. With the Islamic conquest of the seventh century, racial transformation was complete, and Egypt became an Arab state. Although they still ruled their own fate, the Dynastic Egyptians were very race-conscious, often depicting clear divisions of foreign humanity into the black Nubians, the fair-skinned Kheftiu (Minoans), the callow Asiatics, the hook-nosed Semites, the bearded Lebu (Lybians), and the Europoid Hanebu, or “Sea Peoples.”

As early as the 12th Dynasty, in the Middle Kingdom, about 1900 B.C., Senwosret I erected an inscribed nilometer (a device to measure the river’s various flood stages) at the Third Cataract. It survives today and quotes him as having commanded, “No Negro shall pass beyond this point into my realm.” That admonition stood for the next 20 centuries, until long after the decline of Pharaonic Egypt had become irreversible, and the divided country was taken over by Nubian potentates, in 712 B.C. Known as the Ethiopian Period, the XXVth Dynasty was to last a scant 41 years of unrelieved chaos, culminating in catastrophe: the subjugation of Egypt by Assyrian hordes. These late usurpers—Shabaka, Shabataka, and Taharka—were the only blacks to wear the nemes-crown of pharaoh, but they were powerless to actually rule Egyptian society, awash as it was then in civil turmoil and political decay.

Clearly, they were in no position to launch any voyages to Punt, be it America or down the block. Indeed, the last recorded expedition took place during the reign of Ramses III, five centuries earlier. The last of the African-faced Olmec heads was made 100 years before the black XXVth Dynasty was founded. These dating comparisons and the unrest of the Ethiopian Period, when Nubian “pharaohs” were supposed to have dispatched sea-traders to Middle America, obviate any likelihood that the stone heads portray black Egyptians.

In fact, the ancient Mexican artwork far more resemble West Africans. That remarkable resemblance belongs to a peripheral ridge following the outer curvature of the lips, a genetic trait that typifies Ghana negroes and is reproduced on the Olmec stone faces. But here, too, the dates cancel each other out. As mentioned above, the Olmec heads were not carved after 800 B.C., while Ghana society flourished from the 14th century A.D.

Was this West African portrayed in monumental art by the ancient Olmecs because he was a king, favored slave, sacrifice, or champion? Photograph by Claudette Nichols.

Supporters of black ancient Egyptians or later West Africans arriving in prehistoric America nevertheless claim that Olmec art memorializes powerful negro regents. But of the 18 giant heads, three portray distinctly Amerindian, decidedly non-African faces,

such as the long-nosed example visiting Chicago, mentioned above. If the big sculptures portray a line of black kings who ruled pre-Columbian Mexico, how do these Native American versions fit into the picture? Worse, virtually all the other depictions of blacks in Olmec art portray them as servile (such as Alvarado’s sandstone stele), cringing before bearded Semitic types, or contorted in castrated agony (the Danzante figures of Monte Alban). These are hardly the representations of all-powerful monarchs, but more reminiscent of the subservient Nubians portrayed in Egyptian art.

Although West African faces dominate the colossal stone heads, they are not the only foreigners sculpted in Olmec art. A middle Pre-Classic wooden mask originally encrusted with jade decoration, found in a Guerrero cave (presently at New York’s American Museum of Natural History), is so overtly Asian in appearance, an observer might be inclined to assign it to a specific Chinese dynasty. It is by no means the only such example.

Even more common are the profiles of distinctly Semitic faces, often wearing artificial chin-beards, such as the stone relief of an important official on Stele 3, in La Venta Park. The Olmecs were great collectors of jade, the precious mineral that probably drew wealth-seeking merchants from both Occident and Orient, thereby creating the puzzling mix of early Mesoamerican culture. Perhaps the blacks were just part of the crowd of foreigners in search of Mexico’s blue-green treasure. Or maybe they were something more, after all.

The proponents of West African origins for the disembodied stone portraits liken their headgear to the crowns worn by Ghana chieftains. Though both are kind of a cap, real similarities go no further and differ fundamentally in all other details. Moreover, the symbol of Olmec authority was a turban or high, conical hat, while headgear worn by the great stone heads appears to have been a

simple, leather helmet. Too inelegant for royalty and unsuited for war, it would have provided adequate protection for a player during some sporting event, such as the Olmecs engaged in at their ball-courts. If this game was anything like the kind celebrated by the much later Aztecs (and scholars believe it remained essentially unchanged from Olmec times), its connection with persons depicted in the basalt sculptures may be our key to solving the mystery of the stone heads.

Known as Tlachtli, the Mesoamerican ballgame was far more than popular entertainment. Opposing teams sometimes played for weeks or even months at a time. The object was to kick or butt a solid rubber ball through an impossibly small hoop. Attracting the focus of the whole community, the games were serious religious events, wherein cosmological precepts were reenacted through sport, with the ball representing the struggle of the Sun to keep on its heavenly course. All participants were highly honored sacred athletes, especially the leader of the winning team. His reward for victory was to be sacrificed on the high altar of the sun-god. He was decapitated, his head or skull preserved in a public place of honor, while his soul flew up to the blessed regions of the solar deity.

In view of these ritual ballgames apparently inaugurated by the Olmecs, the most plausible explanation for the colossal stone heads is that they are portraits of and memorials to Tlachtli’s victorious, decapitated team-players. The larger-than-life sculptures represent the ritually sacrificed heroes of the ball-courts, an interpretation that at once accounts for their monumental size, their football-like helmets and disembodied portrayal. But what accounts for their African faces?

If we look around the world at the time the great stone heads were made (from decades immediately preceding the 10th century B.C. to no later than 800 B.C.), we find that Solomon, ancient Israel’s greatest king, was operating a huge commercial fleet manned by Phoenician sailors. Their ships ventured far to bring him the wealth

of fabled territories, such as the legendary Ophir. If that far-off land of precious minerals (jade?) and abundant gold was Mexico (which does indeed provide an uncanny match for biblical descriptions of Ophir), then the anomalous Semitic profiles and Near Eastern apparel of the figures depicted on Olmec stele probably belong to sea-traders hired by King Solomon. The Phoenicians had important commercial dealings with black Africa, as evidenced by Hanno’s well-documented expedition to Sierra Leone and the Cameroons. Edey writes that the Admiral “was interested in solidifying African trade,” and blacks regularly served aboard Phoenician vessels. When they made port-of-call at the Mexican Ophir, several of the black crewmen may have been won over to the Olmec religion and its ritual ballgame.

Judging from the faces portrayed on the stone heads, there were no converts among the Phoenicians. Natural athletic prowess combined with a new spiritual fervor (supplemented by mind-altering drugs) and the deification by a whole society, resulted in the black foreigners becoming Tlachtli players, whose reward for being on the winning team was decapitation. Their bold faces still look out at the world they left, nearly 3,000 years after their fatal victories.

Joseph, F (2006). Discovering the mysteries of ancient America : lost history and legends, unearthed and explored. USA: Mark Book Press

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