A History of the African-Olmecs

Gloger’s Law supports the idea that humans originated in Africa and migrated to other regions. Those who went to the cold northern lands adapted to the cold climate. In fact, according to Cheikh Antah Diop, Gloger’s Law states that warm-blooded animals originating in a hot and humid climate would be pigmented (Diop, C.A., 1991, p. 11). This fact clearly indicates that the very first humans to inhabit the Americas and the entire world came out of Africa between 200,000 to 100,000 years ago. According to The Gladwin Thesis (1947), Blacks were in the Americas as early as 70,000 B.C. These first Blacks may have been the Australoid type as well as diminutive Blacks such as the Pygmies, Agta, Bushmen and others.

It is unlikely that the prehistoric Blacks whose ramains have been discovered in the Americas, evolved from Mongoloids and developed in situ in the Americas, into Negritic racial types. This idea can be refuted due to the fact that if humans entered the Americas between 30,000 years B.C. to 150,000 years B.C., they would have had to have been Negroid. Prehistoric Blacks were moving worldwide. Consequently, the prehistoric migrants to the Americas during that period would have had to have been Negroid and Black. It seems more possible that people who were Negritic changed into the Mongoloid type in the Americas in order to adapt to the cold climate in the north. In fact, the Kong and San peoples of Southern Africa, who live in climatic regions similar to that of East Asia (the cold, windy, high veldt of Southern Africa) possess the so-called "Mongoloid" characteristics such as yellowish-brown skin, short stature and the epicantus eye fold. Yet, genetically and in most other aspects, they are typical Negroids with features that can be found from the tip of Southern Africa to North Africa among the various Negritic peoples. These Negritic peoples are the among the earliest examples of the prehistoric Homo sapien types who once settled the entire world before the development of distinct "races" in various parts of the planet. Furthermore, findings based on mitochondrial DNA proves without a doubt that the earliest ancestors of all Homo sapiens alive today came from Central Africa. The place of origin of the pre-Columbian Blacks who inhabited the Americas has been placed in a number of geographical regions, including the Americas itself. Yet, based on the close similarities between cultural assets found in West Africa, particular during the ancient, pre-Christian Ghana Empire (3000 B.C. to 400 A.D.) and those of ancient Mexico, many anthropologists, historians and scientists such as Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus, 1976), Alexander Von Wuthenau (Unexpected Faces in Pre-Columbian America), and Andrezej Wiercinski, the Polish crainologist who concluded that there was a significant ancient African presence in ancient Mexico. Studies conducted by anthropologists, historians and others on the Blacks of Olmec Mexico show cultural similarities not merely with ancient Ghana, but with West Africa in general. For example, Ivan Van Sertima’s quote of R.A. Jairazbhoy’s quote from the Quiche Maya book, the Titulo Coyoi, clearly points to a West African origin and influence for some ot the cultural contributions to Olmec artistic works which portray Black African types or Negritic features.

In his address to the Smithsonian (1992, p.45) Van Sertima points out that the Maya Oral tradition describes artifacts and materials brought Mexico by people who most likely came from West Africa. "These things came from the East (east of the Gulf of Mexico), from the other side of the water and the sea. They came here, they had their thrones, their little benches and stools, they had their parasols and their bone flutes."(3) These items are still very common in West Africa and are used by chiefs, kings, noblemen and their entourages. Such items are symbols of power and influence. In fact, golden stools or replicas are still carried by the Ashanti Nation of Ghana, along with large, multi-colored umbrellas, flutes of bone and ivory as well as trumpets and horns of the same materials

The period in which these observations were made by the Maya may have been anytime between 1800 B.C. to about 1000 A.D. This record may have survived from a very early period in the history of Mexico, when Africans and Native Americans met somewhere in the Bay of Campeche. During this period, whether it was as early as 1800 B.C., or as late as 1000 A.D., Ghana was in existence first as a prehistoric kingdom in what is today Mauritania about 8000 B.C. In fact, this very region may have been the home of one of the most ancient civilizations on earth. According to Mobetter News (South Holland, Illinois), a prehistoric empire called the Zingh Empire existed in the present location of Mauritania about 15,000 years ago. One of its most famous Emperors was Tirus Afrik who designed the African standard, the red, black and green flag.

There are three periods which covers the history of Ghana. The first period was a continuation of a prehistoric civilization which existed in the Sahara during the Wet Phase, when much of the extensive lake covered areas had given way to dry, fertile, forest covered terrain. A culture which practiced agriculture and were connected to the Mende Speaking peoples existed in West Africa. That same culture developed into a great civilization between 3000 B.C. to 400 A.D., and continued to exist up to about 1000 A.D. It was from this Ghana, during the periods mentioned, that most of the ancient Blacks whose likenesses still exist in Olmec stonework of Mexico, sailed from Africa to Mexico.