No one from Africa, the Middle East or Europe introduced agriculture to Mexico. The domestication of indigenous American plants occurred independently.

A yama or “slash and burn” agricultural field in southern Mexico

As we continue our series on the origins of the supposed first civilization in Mexico, this fact should be made clear. An indigenous Gulf Coast people, whose ancestors either came by canoe or foot from Asia, independently developed agriculture long before what North American anthropologists label the “Olmec civilization” appeared.

Currently, the oldest known cultivated fields in Mexico were along the Grijalva River delta in Tabasco State.  In 2001, scientists discovered fossilized pollen there and radiocarbon dated it.  The results showed a forest being cleared around 5100 BC to grow domesticated maize (Indian Corn).  This means that large scale agriculture was already underway at that time.  There are probably older fields that have not been discovered.

The large scale maize cultivation along the Grijalva River was soon followed by fully domesticated sunflowers and cotton.  Undoubtedly,  the initial steps in domestication of indigenous plants began in Tabasco at least 1-2,000 years earlier.  There were undoubtedly domesticated or semi-domesticated varieties of indigenous fruits and vegetables being domesticated simultaneously in gardens near homes.

Agriculture enabled the inhabitants of Tabasco to expand their populations through the centuries, but there were no towns with large communal structures until around 800 BC. The earliest known mounds in the Americas, dated from about 9,000 BC and are located in northeastern Louisiana. The knowledge of how to make pottery did not arrive in Tabasco until around 900 BC. Eastern Georgia had pottery as early as 2400 BC.

Thus, when other ethnic groups . . . or perhaps, just small bands of voyagers . . . arrived in the region, it already had the capacity to feed a much larger population. The arrival of “civilization’ was merely a matter of the population being concentrated by a political and/or religious authority into towns, and ultimately, some cities.

What the aboriginal Tabascans looked like

Two statues from Monte Alban – It is strongly suspected, but not yet proven by advanced genetic analysis, that the aboriginal people of Tabasco were closely related to the Otomi of Central Mexico and the Proto-Choctaw, then living in both Tamaulipas and the Lower Mississippi River Basin.

A teenage girl (left) and a young man (right) from Xochipala

Two men and a young woman (center) from Xochipala

HUMOR

This beautiful figurine is from Tlatilco in the Valley of Mexico.  It is a dancing girl, wearing a conical straw hat. It probably dates from around 500 BC to 100 BC.    Tlatilco was apparently settled by people from Tabasco or else was in close trade contacts with towns in Tabasco.

The photograph is a metaphor for everything that was depraved about academic anthropology in the Southeast a decade ago.   It accompanied an email that I received about three weeks before the December 21, 1970 TV premier of “America Unearthed.”  The sender said that he was a traveling salesman from Athens, GA (location of the University of Georgia), who had discovered this figurine in a garden of a friend’s house near Track Rock Gap in the Georgia Mountains.  He urged me to publish it in the Examiner as proof that the Mayas came to Georgia. 

I instantly recognized the figurine as being from Tlatilco, but didn’t let on to the “traveling salesman.” Of course, I didn’t publish the photo in the Examiner. 

Actually,  I had a special reason for knowing this beautiful figurine.  It had been unearthed by my fellowship coordinator,  Dr.  Román Piña Chan, when he worked at Tlatilco as a young man AND was on the cover of the Guide to the National Museum of Anthropology, which was sold to tourists in 1970.  Furthermore,  it was on an oak shelf, immediately to the right of the entrance door of his office in the museum.

I traced the email to a server on the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee.  That did not make sense.  I contacted one of my “student intelligence assets” in the University of Georgia Department of Anthropology.  She said that the email was most likely sent by a young anthropology professor, who knew nothing about me,  Mexico or the Native Americans in Georgia or me . . . but she certainly hated me with a passion, mainly because I was a man.  The academician frequently raged that I should be emasculated . . . but used coarser terms. 

The UGA professor and her FSU girlfriend typically visited with each other on most weekends.  That would explain why the email was sent through an FSU server computer.

The traveling salesman emailed me again.  He said that he had spoken to his friend Bill Torpy at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Torpy urged me to hold a press conference at Track Rock Gap to present the proof that the Mayas came to Georgia and invite news teams from all the Atlanta TV stations.  The traveling salesman said that he would meet me up there with the figurine.  Yes, the Georgia archaeologists really thought I was that ignorant and stupid.

Five days before the premier, I emailed the “traveling salesman,” stating that he was in possession of stolen property.  The figurine that he wanted to take to the press conference was stolen from the office of the curator of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia de Mexico two years ago.  I had photographed it with Dr. Piña Chan . . . the last time that I visited Mexico in 2000.   I had forwarded my photograph, all of his emails, plus his photograph to both the FBI office and Mexican Consulate in Atlanta. 

My intelligence asset at the UGA Department of Anthropology informed me that the female anthropology professor, who wanted to emasculate me, had a pale complexion and stared blankly out into space for the next three weeks.

PS – The figurine had not been stolen.  LOL