The Olmec culture existed in what is now southern Mexico from roughly 1200 BCE to 400 BCE. The idea that the Olmecs are related to Africans was first suggested by José Melgar, who discovered the first colossal head at Hueyapan (now Tres Zapotes) in 1862.Stirling, p. 2, who cites Melgar, Jose (1869) "Antigüedades mexicanas, notable escultura antigua", in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, época 2, vol. 1, pp. 292–297, Mexico, as well as Melgar, Jose (1871) "Estudio sobre la antigüedad y el origen de la Cabeza Colosal de tipo etiópico que existe en Hueyapan del cantón de los Tuxtlas" in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, época 2, vol. 3, pp. 104–109; Mexico. More recently, Ivan Van Sertima speculated an African influence on Mesoamerican culture in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). His claims included the attribution of Mesoamerican pyramids, calendar technology, mummification, and mythology to the arrival of Africans by boat on currents running from Western Africa to the Americas. Heavily inspired by Leo Wiener (see below), Van Sertima suggested that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl represented an African visitor. His conclusions have been severely criticized by mainstream academics and considered pseudoarchaeology."CA Forum on Anthropology in Public: Robbing Native Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs", Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, no. 3 (June 1997), 419–441.
The Olmec culture existed in what is now southern Mexico from roughly 1200 BCE to 400 BCE. The idea that the Olmecs are related to Africans was first suggested by José Melgar, who discovered the first colossal head at Hueyapan (now Tres Zapotes) in 1862.Stirling, p. 2, who cites Melgar, Jose (1869) "Antigüedades mexicanas, notable escultura antigua", in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, época 2, vol. 1, pp. 292–297, Mexico, as well as Melgar, Jose (1871) "Estudio sobre la antigüedad y el origen de la Cabeza Colosal de tipo etiópico que existe en Hueyapan del cantón de los Tuxtlas" in Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, época 2, vol. 3, pp. 104–109; Mexico. More recently, Ivan Van Sertima speculated an African influence on Mesoamerican culture in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). His claims included the attribution of Mesoamerican pyramids, calendar technology, mummification, and mythology to the arrival of Africans by boat on currents running from Western Africa to the Americas. Heavily inspired by Leo Wiener (see below), Van Sertima suggested that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl represented an African visitor. His conclusions have been severely criticized by mainstream academics and considered pseudoarchaeology."CA Forum on Anthropology in Public: Robbing Native Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs", Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, no. 3 (June 1997), 419–441.