6.8 America: 1500 to 1000 b.c.  (Page 3/4)

It is difficult to be certain of the exact physical type of the original Central and South American Indians, since the populations that came back to life after the territories became independent of Spain, are now so cross-bred with Europeans, Chinese and Africans that identification is impossible. The Chinese factor brings up still another diffusion theory that has been advanced as late as 1975 by Betty Meggers (Ref. 141 ) of the Smithsonian Institute, who believes that the invaders were Chinese from the Shang Dynasty! As others have, she points out that in Meso-America

• writing, stating that a few, often repeated Olmec symbols resemble Shang characters, and later Maya glyphs were read top to bottom in Shang fashion (characters of Minoan Linear A of Crete were read similarly)
• jade, a primary commodity of long distance trade in both societies
• batons as a symbol of rank, some with bifurcated tops
• feline deity, the Shang tiger and the Olmec jaguar both associated with the earth god and both often drawn lacking a lower jaw
• worship of mountains
• cranial deformation, apparently artificially produced in the center of the head of rulers
• large groups of scattered villages with central service Centers
• the construction of rectangular platforms with a north-south orientation.

As might be expected, refutations of Meggers' theory soon appeared. David Grove (Ref. 80 ) of the University of Illinois says that the society which we have mentioned as being in the Oaxaca Valley between 1,500 and 1,400 B.C. was a complex culture and perhaps preceded those of the Gulf coast, and would more apt to be the Olmec ancestor than the Shang. Furthermore, he says that the jade carving may not even have been Olmec and that the feline deity idea came up from South America. He also makes the point that excavations by Coe at San Lorenze on the Gulf coast since 1970 have revealed significant Olmec cultural levels which predate those at La Venta, but also pre-Olmec levels, suggesting that the Olmec culture appeared gradually rather than suddenly. Meggers immediately replied to this in a publication in 1976 (Ref. 142 ) stating that twenty-three of the references she had consulted for her previous publication had been written between 1970 and 1974 and that she was still convinced that Shang refugees were involved in Central America. The concept of the sudden appearance of the Olmec society seems to be given another boost by the 1977 publication, The Encyclopedia of Archeology (Ref. 45 ) which discusses recent investigations at San Lorenzo by Yale University, describing that center as having the longest stratigraphic history of any known Olmec center and that it was constructed on an artificially raised mass of land, built by the Olmecs to support a number of earthern pyramid constructions, plazas and mounds, all laid out along a north-south axis. The writer indicated that the Olmec Culture was emerging at this site just in 1,250 B.C. and that most of the pure Olmec monuments and structures actually date from 1,150 B.C. onwards.