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The 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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