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OLMEC ENIGMA:
Astronaut Corroborates Sitchin
If
an astronaut were ever to corroborate an aspect of my writings, I would have
expected it to be in regard to planetary matters.
Surprisingly, such a corroboration concerns, of all things, the Olmecs of
ancient Mexico.
The
unexpected corroboration is tucked away in the recently published book A
Leap of Faith by the Mercury-7 astronaut Gordon Cooper, in which his
story as a test pilot and astronaut is peppered with (to quote from the dust
jacket) "his strong views on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence
-- and even the distinct possibility that we have already had contact."
The
Olmec Enigma
 Readers
of my books, and especially of The Lost Realms, as well as of a previous
article on this website titled "The
Case of the Missing Elephant," know by now that beginning with the
discovery of a colossal stone head in 1869, an advanced civilization that
preceded the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico came to light.
Its leaders and bearers were unmistakably black Africans.
They were arbitrarily named by archaeologists "Olmecs"; and
their embarrassing enigma -- of who they were, and how they had come across the
ocean, and why, was compounded by the timing of their arrival in the New World.
Once
it was conceded (very grudgingly!) that the 'Olmecs' did indeed represent the
earliest or even Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica, the date of their arrival
was at first set at about 250 B.C.; then at about 500 B.C.; then farther back
and back, until 1500 B.C. was acknowledged.
But
I have argued for a date twice as old!
A
God and His Secret Number
My
conclusion that the Olmec presence in the New World went back at least 5,000
years, to circa 3000 B.C., was reached by many paths.
The first one was an attempt to identify the great god of Mesoamerica,
the Winged Serpent (Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, Kukulkan to the Mayas),
and the significance of his promise to return to those lands on the first day of
a 52-year cycle, (AD 1519, when the Aztec king Montezuma believed that the
appearance of the Spanish conquistador Cortez was such a Return, coincided with
the anticipated sacred date).
 The
peoples of Mesoamerica employed in addition to a practical calendar of 365 days,
called the Haab, also a Sacred Calendar (called Tzolkin) of 260
days.
The two cyclical calendars were conceived as two wheels with meshing
teeth that turned and returned to the same spot once in 52 years; and 52 was the
Sacred Number of the Winged Serpent god?
Since
52 was also the Secret Number of the god known to the Egyptians as Thoth;
since Thoth as Quetzalcoatl, was the god of science and the calendar; and since
Thoth was exiled from Egypt circa 3100 B.C., I have suggested that it was he who
took a group of his African followers to a new land, bringing the "Olmecs"
to Mesoamerica.
Accordingly,
I said, Olmec presence goes back to at least 3000 B.C. -- a date twice as old as
that conceded by established archaeologists.
The
Mysterious "Day One"
By
the time I was writing The Lost Realms, the book devoted to the
prehistory of the Americas, I was sure that the arrival of the Olmecs with
Thoth/Quetzalcoatl could be established with astounding precision.
The key to unlocking the enigma was the Olmec Calendar.
 In
addition to the Haab and the Tzolkin, there was in Mesoamerica a third calendar,
used to inscribe dates on monuments.
Given the name the Long Count, it was not cyclical as the other
two, but linear -- a continuous one, counting the total number of days that had
passed since the counting began on a mysterious Day One.
By
means of glyphs denoting groups of days (1, 20, 360, 7,200 or even 144,000)
and dots and bars giving the number for each group-glyph, monuments were
dated by saying: A total of so many days from Day One have passed when this
Monument was erected.
But
what was that Day One, when did it occur, and what was its significance?
It
has been established beyond doubt that this Long Count calendar was the original
Olmec calendar; and it is now generally agreed that Day One was equivalent to
August 13, 3113 B.C.
But
what does that date signify?
As far as I know, the only plausible answer was provided by me: It was
the date of Thoth/Quetzalcoatl's arrival, with his followers in Mesoamerica!
The
Unexpected Corroboration
All
official publications continue, however, to remain at 1250 B.C. -- 1500 B.C. at
most -- as the date of the start of the Olmec presence.
Imagine
my pleasant surprise to come across an eye-witness report by the astronaut
Gordon Cooper in chapter 11 of his book A Leap of Faith.
"During my final years with NASA," he writes, "I became
involved in a different kind of adventure: undersea treasure hunting in
Mexico." One day, accompanied by a National Geographic photographer,
they landed in a small plane on an island in the Gulf of Mexico; local residents
pointed out to them pyramid-shaped mounds, where they found ruins, artifacts and
bones.
On examination back in Texas, the artifacts were determined to be 5,000
years old!
"When
we learned of the age of the artifacts," Cooper writes, �we realized that
what we'd found had nothing to do with seventeenth-century Spain... I contacted
the Mexican government and was put in touch with the head of the national
archaeology department, Pablo Bush Romero."
Together
with Mexican archeologists the two went back to the site.
After some excavating, Cooper writes,
"The
age of the ruins was confirmed: 3000 B.C. Compared with other advanced
civilizations, relatively little was known about this one --called the Olmec."
Proceeding
to describe some of the amazing discoveries about the Olmecs and their
achievements, Gordon Cooper continues thus:
"Engineers,
farmers, artisans, and traders, the Olmecs had a remarkable civilization.
But it is still not known where they originated... Among the findings that
intrigued me most: celestial navigation symbols and formulas that, when
translated, turned out to be mathematical formulas used to this day for
navigation, and accurate drawings of constellations, some of which would not
be officially 'discovered' until the age of modern telescopes."
It
was this, rather than his experiences as an astronaut, that triggered Gordon
Cooper's "Leap of faith": "This left me wondering: Why have
celestial navigation signs if they weren't navigating celestially?�
And he asks: If �someone� had helped the Olmecs with this knowledge, from
whom did they get it?
My
readers, of course, know the answers.
Has
the Cover-up Ended?
The
outstanding museum on the Olmec civilization in Jalapa, in the Veracruz province
of Mexico, included when it was built a wall panel showing the extent and dates
of Mexico's various cultures.
On my first visit there, I could hardly believe my eyes: The first
(earliest) civilization, that of the Olmecs, was shown as begun circa 3000 B.C.!
I
urged the members of my group to take pictures of me pointing to the date:
Finally, the date claimed by me has been officially accepted!
On
a second visit, however (to which the previous article, The
Case of the Missing Elephant relates), not only the telltale elephant-toy
disappeared; the Olmec column starting at 3000 B.C. was also gone... And the
official Museum Catalogue, reviewing the Olmec civilization, reverted to 1500
B.C.
But
now comes the astronaut Gordon Cooper, and innocently and inter-alia tells, as
an eye-witness, what he was told by the chief Mexican archaeologist: 3000 B.C.
And
thus, when all is said and done, I stand vindicated.
Zecharia
Sitchin
November 2000
�
Z. Sitchin 2002
Reprinted with permission
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