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The Epoch Times
The Origins of
Olmec Culture
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By LEONARDO VINTIÑI
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There is an ancient culture that flourished in Mesoamerica around 1100 A.D. still baffling historians—the
mysterious Olmecs. Their religious rituals are far from
completely understood, but so too are their origins. How
did this culture that appeared seemingly overnight go on
to exhibit such an enormous influence on the rest of the
region?
According to several authors, including Mike Xu,
professor of Chinese studies at the University of Central
Oklahoma, the Olmecs are descendants of ancient Chinese. The evidence? The Olmec culture began around
1100 A.D., some years after the fall of China’s Shang dynasty (1766 to 1122 B.C.). According to ancient chronicles
of that era, when the Zhou were invading and plundering the Shang, records state that the son of the emperor
brought 25,000 adepts toward the “eastern ocean.” According to Mike Xu, these were the first Olmec people.
At that time in history, China’s ocean fleet was the
most advanced of the day. Some historians propose that
these Chinese travelers could have arrived on the American coast thanks to the “black current.” Known as Kuro
Shiwo or “current of death” in Japanese, this Pacific current would have been capable of navigating an ancient
Chinese sailor to the Americas. In his article for the sailing magazine 48 Degrees North, “Are We Living in the
Land of Fusang?” Hewitt R. Jackson writes that there is
evidence of similar pre-Columbian Chinese sea voyages
that have already been confirmed:
“Probably the best documented account that has been
studied is that of Hwui Chan (Hoei Shin). He was a “chamen” or mendicant priest who had made his way from
Afghanistan among the first of the Buddhist missionaries to reach China. This was a period of great expansion for Buddhism and extraordinary journeys by land
and sea were common for the “cha-men.” Hwui Chan
sailed to the Americas some five hundred years before
Leif Erickson and a thousand before Columbus. His description of the land he visited seems to indicate that he
passed by California and settled in Mexico. After a stay
of forty years he returned to China in 499 A.D. and related the story of his labors and travels to Wu Ti, the Emperor. The story of Fusang was at that time well known
in China. This eventually has been recognized and accepted by western scholars, but for some reason it has
fallen out of fashion in our history and literature within
the past century.”
While the black current explains the journey, ancient
Olmec artifacts give the theory further substance. The
written language found on the Olmecs’ jars, pottery,
and statues reveals what could be the actual influence
of Chinese culture. Professor Xu points out that various
words found on these decorative objects match exactly
with those used in Shang China: Sun, Mountain, Artist,
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Water, Rain, Sacrifice, Health, Plants, Wealth, and Earth.
In fact, the majority of the 146 characters used by the Olmecs are exactly the same as primitive Chinese writing.
When Xu showed the Olmec artifacts to university students involved in analyzing primitive Chinese culture,
they actually believed it was ancient Chinese script.
While most Mesoamerican scholars do not accept
Xu’s theory—critics have labeled him “the most dangerous person in Mesoamerican research”—it nevertheless
offers insights about the mysterious Olmecs that more
accepted theories cannot reach.
In her letter to Science Magazine in 2005, Betty J.
Meggers of the National Museum of Natural History at
the Smithsonian Institution criticizes most Mesoamerican scholars’ failure to acknowledge Xu’s comparisons:
“The invention of writing revolutionized Chinese society
by facilitating communication among speakers of 60 mutually unintelligible languages and resulted in increased
commercial interaction and social integration. The rapid
diffusion of Olmec iconography and associated cultural
elaboration suggests it had the same impact across multilingual Mesoamerica. The demise of the Shang Empire
circa 1500 B.C.E. coincides with the emergence of Olmec
civilization. Rather than speculate in a vacuum on the intangible character of Olmec society, it would seem profitable to compare the archaeological remains with the detailed record of the impact of writing on the development
of Chinese civilization. What do we have to lose?”
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Small Planets Forming in the Pleiades, Say Astronomers
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WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Small,
rocky planets that could resemble
the Earth or Mars may be forming
around a star in the Pleiades star cluster, astronomers reported earlier this
month.
One of the stars in the cluster, also
known as the Seven Sisters, is surrounded by an extraordinary number
of hot dust particles that could be the
“building blocks of planets” said Inseok Song, a staff scientist at NASA’s
Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.
“This is the first clear evidence for
planet formation in the Pleiades, and
the results we are presenting may well
be the first observational evidence that
terrestrial planets like those in our solar system are quite common,” said
Joseph Rhee of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study.
There is “hundreds of thousands
of times as much dust as around our
sun,” said Benjamin Zuckerman, a
UCLA professor of physics and as-
Noah’s Ark Flood
Spurred European Farming
LONDON (Reuters)—An ancient flood that some
say could be the origin of the story of Noah’s Ark may
have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300
years ago by scattering the continent’s earliest farmers, researchers said.
Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North
American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by
as much as 4.6 feet, displaced tens of thousands of
people in southeastern Europe who carried farming
skills to their new homes.
The researchers said in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews that their study provides direct evidence
linking the flood that breached a ridge keeping the
Mediterranean apart from the Black Sea to the rise of
farming in Europe.
“The flooding of the Black Sea was not well dated
but we got it down to about 50 years,” said Chris Turney, a geologist at the University of Exeter, who led the
study. “As soon as the flooding is done, farming goes
crazy across Europe.”
The researchers created reconstructions of the
Mediterranean and Black Sea shoreline before and
after the rise in sea levels. They estimated the flood
covered some 45,400 square miles over a 34-year
period, causing mass displacement of people.
Previous archaeological evidence has shown communities in the region were already farming when the
flood hit. The Exeter team suggests the mass migration caused a sudden expansion of farming and pottery production across the continent.
“We looked at all the earliest data on farming in
Europe and we found a little bit of farming in Greece
and the Balkans just before the flood,” Turney said
in a telephone interview. “When the flood happened,
farming seemed to stop but it was re-established a
generation later across Europe.”
The researchers believe these people took their
skills to new areas previously populated by hunters
and gatherers where there had been no evidence of
farming, Turney said.
The study also underscores the potential impact
that rising sea levels may have in the future, the researchers said. An expected three-foot rise by the end
of the century due to climate change would displace
some 145 million people, Turney added.
It also paints a picture of the kind of mass disruption that has prompted some scientists to link the ancient flood to the origins of the biblical story of Noah’s
Ark, Turney said.
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—Joseph Rhee,
University of California, Los Angeles
tronomy. “The dust must be the debris
from a monster collision, a cosmic catastrophe.”
The team used two telescopes to
spot the dust, and report their findings
in Astrophysical Journal.
Located about 400 light-years away
in the constellation of Taurus, the Plei-
ades is one of the best known star clusters and among the closest to Earth. A
light-year is the distance light travels
in a year, about 5.8 trillion miles.
“The cluster actually contains some
1,400 stars,” said Song.
Song said the dust can accumulate
into comets and small asteroid-size
bodies, and then clump together to
form planetary embryos, and finally
full-fledged planets.
“In the process of creating rocky,
terrestrial planets, some objects collide and grow into planets, while others shatter into dust; we are seeing that
dust,” Song said.
“Our observations indicate that terrestrial planets similar to those in our
solar system are probably quite common,” Zuckerman added.
Researchers have observed about
200 planets around stars outside our
solar system but none are as small as
Earth and just one, spotted earlier this
year, appears potentially capable of
supporting life.