African Skeletons in Mexico

excerpted from African Origin of Olmec Skeletons: Good Scholarship, by Clyde A. Winters.

But the evidence of African skeletons found at many Olmec sites, and their trading partners from the Old World found by Dr. Andrzej Wiercinski prove the cosmopolitan nature of Olmec society. Many African skeletons have been found in Mexico. Carlo Marquez (1956, pp.179-180) claimed that these skeletons indicated marked pronathousness and prominent cheek bones.

Wiercinski found African skeletons at the Olmec sites of Monte Alban and Tlatilco. Morley, Brainerd and Sharer (1989) said that Monte Alban was a colonial Olmec center (p.12). Diehl and Coe (1996) admitted that the inspiration of Olmec Horizon A, common to San Lorenzo's iniitial phase has been found at Tlatilco. Moreover, the pottery fron this site is engraved with Olmec signs.

Rossum has criticied the work of Wiercinski because he found that not only blacks, but whites were also present in ancient America. To support this view he (1) claims that Wiercinski was wrong because he found that Negro/Black people lived in Shang China, and 2) that he compared ancient skeletons to modern Old World people.

First, it was not surprising that Wiercinski found affinities between African/Negro and ancient Chinese populations, because everyone knows that many Negro/African/Oceanic skeletons have been found in ancient China see: Kwang-chih Chang, (1976,1977, p.76,1987, pp.64,68) The Archaeology of ancient China. These Blacks were spread throughout Kwangsi, Kwantung, Szechwan, Yunnan and Pearl River delta. Moreover skeletons from Liu-Chiang and Dawenkou were also Negro. Moreover, the Dawenkou skeletons show skull deformation and extraction of teeth customs, analogous to customs among Blacks in Polynesia and Africa.

Secondly, Rossum argues that Wiercinski was wrong about Blacks in ancient America because a comparison of modern native American skeletal material and the ancient Olmec skeletal material indicate no admixture. The study of Vargas and Rossum are flawed. They are flawed because the skeletal reference collection they used in their comparison of Olmec skeletal remains and modern Amerindian propulations because the Mexicans have been mixing with African and European populations since the 1500's. This has left many components of these Old World people within and among Mexican Amerindians.

Wiercinski on the otherhand, compared his SRC to an unmixed European and African sample. This comparison avoided the use of skeletal material that is clearly mixed with Africans and Europeans, in much the same way as the Afro-American people he discussed in his essay who have acquired "white" features since mixing with whites due to the slave trade.

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