Footnote: The “Olmec” and Maya civilizations did not “suddenly disappear!”

The simplistic stories of the past in high school geography textbooks and major network documentaries have so saturated the knowledge base of the journalists, who write articles on the history of the Americas that even most archaeologists in North America do not know what really happened in Mesoamerica and Southeastern North America. During the coming months, we will be visiting locales in the Southeastern United States and Mexico that have NOT been popularized by the media. I don’t want readers to get kornfuzed when the facts they were taught do not match reality.

Case in point . . the large town, now called Troyville, is named after a plantation that once existed nearby. Its architecture and cultural sophistication was identical to contemporary towns in southern Vera Cruz and western Tabasco. Both regions only built earthen pyramids. The main pyramid in Troyville was identical in architectural style and size to the main pyramid of La Venta, Tabasco , , , which was abandoned around 500 BC. It is also identical in design to the much larger. but contemporary earthen pyramid of Cholula, near Puebla, Mexico. Vast quantities of Maya Blue saturated clay has been found in and around the temples of Troyville.

Another example of cultural continuity is found in the site plan of the original town of Coweta . . . on the Ocmulgee River, north of Macon, GA. It was sketched by William Bartram in 1776. Coweta was constructed about 2,000 years AFTER La Venta was abandoned!

The real story of the “Olmec” and Maya Civilizations

After scanning through two books on the Southeastern Native American peoples that I had given him,, the immediate response of Dr. Román Piña Chán (at the time, curator of the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia) was that the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Alabama and Koasati Peoples were a continuation of the civilizations of the southern Gulf Coast region of Mexico. After we ate a catered lunch, Dr. Piña Chán invited his graduate assistant, Alejandra, and I to pull our chairs beside his as we poured through book after book. which illustrated the similarities between the lives of the “regular” folks, who composed 95% of southern Mexico’s population and the Muskogean peoples of the Southeast.

The Creek and Soque-Miccosukee Migration Legends that I found in 2015, verified his observation. In fact, the Soque Migration Legend specifically states that they were the founder of La Cultura Madre, which Gringos called the Olmec Civilization.

Mexico lagged behind the Southeast in every aspect, except agriculture, until around 800 BC. The Southern Mesoamericans did not have pottery or start building mounds until around 900 BC.

La Venta, Tabasco at its peak size around 600 BC

“Olmec” Civilization: Several large “Olmec Civilization” cities were abandoned around 500-600 BC, but the population of the region thrived. They developed into the Olmecoid (Central Mexico),Epi-Olmec and Gulf Coast civilizations, which were more sophisticated than the Mother Culture, but did not expend so much energy into constructing massive earthen pyramids. Most of the artifacts that you are shown in the TV documentaries on the “mysterious Olmec Civilization” were actually created by the Olmecoid, Epi-Olmec and Gulf Coast civilizations.

The indigenous civilizations of southern Mexico collapsed at the same time that Troyville was abandoned. This was caused by invasions of Chichimec barbarians from northern Mexico. They were transient, parasitic cannibals, who ate the people and plant food reserves of a region then moved on. Charles de Rochefort described another one of these human swarms reeking havoc in the Southeast. Northern Louisiana is close enough to northern Mexico to make this the possible fate of Troyville.

Maya Civilization: The Mayas did not call themselves Mayas until the Spanish told them that was their name. They did not even consider themselves to be one ethnic group until the centuries of attempts to drive out their Spanish and later Latin American oppressors gave them a common identity.

Wakata, near Lake Okeechobee, FL, was capital of Maiam from around 900 AD to around 1150 AD. It had the same life span as the Acropolis at Ocmulgee National Historical Park. The cities and towns of Maiam were connected by a sophisticated network of canals and raised causeways.

The name Maya comes from a tribe of extremely short people, who probably originated in the Southeastern United States. They called themselves the Mai. The Mai in the Southern Highlands were called Rat People by the Creeks and Mouse People by the Cherokee. Some bands were skilled seafarers, who also populated the northern tip of Yucatan and probably the Campeche Coastal Plain. At the time of European Contact, their provinces in extreme southern Florida and the north-central tip of Yucatan were both called Maiam (Mai – Place). Miami is derived from their name for Lake Okeechobee . . . Maiami

The earliest Maya civilizations were in eastern Chiapas State near the city of Itzapa and in the vicinity of Lake Peten Itza in northern Guatemala. However, the Itza Mayas were not ethnic Mayas and originally spoke a language similar to the Panoan languages of eastern Peru.

The western and central Maya city states were ruled by Teotihuacan from around 100 AD to 600 AD. Teotihuacan furnished the princes, who ruled each province. There was a neighborhood of “Mayas” living in Teotihuacan, near the Plaza of the Colonnades. The remains of perhaps thousands of sacrificial victims have been found by ground radar underneath that plaza.

The “Maya” civilization came close to collapsing in the period between 540 AD and 600 AD. There was a horrific period of overcast skies and unusually low temperatures in the northern hemisphere during this period due to several major volcanic eruptions around the world.

The Southeast and Maya Lands were also severely harmed by the impact of a large comet off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. The tsunami debris ridge near Darien, GA is still up to 85 feet (26 m) high. The population in Campeche declined by 50% during this period, while the population of northern Georgia increased.

Western Chiapas and southwestern Tabasco were incinerated by the eruption of the El Chichon Caldera in 800 AD. A much wider region of prime agricultural lands were depopulated by the blanket of volcanic ash. Surviving Itzas migrated northward into NW Yucatan. Itzas already predominated in central Campeche. Other Maya tribes migrated from western Belize and SE Guatemala into northeastern Yucatan.

The lack of food coming from Chiapas, combined with a severe long term drought in the Maya Heartland caused city states with large capitals to begin a period of chronic warfare and famines . . . resulting in the abandonment of most cities in the heartland by 900 AD.

Beginning around 990 AD, the architectural character of Ocmulgee began evolving from being South American to being Mesoamerican. A cluster of large rectangular houses, typical of Soque (Zoque) merchants, were constructed around the main plaza at Ocmulgee. Itza Maya Commoner traditions such as shell-tempered redware pottery and corner door houses appeared in Georgia then began spreading outward into the Southeast.

A large asteroid fragmented over the North Atlantic on September 28, 1014 AD (Gregorian Calendar), causing multiple tsunamis. Several hundred thousand people were killed in western and northwestern Europe. Geological evidence suggests that the damage was even more severe on the coast of North America, particularly in the Maritime Provinces and New England. One of those fragments may have struck the Nacoochee Valley. This would explain the 2000 feet wide Sky Serpent earthwork in that valley.

Cities and towns in Eastern Tabasco, Campeche and Yucatan continued to thrive until at least the time of the 1500 AD Small Pox Plague. Some cities stayed occupied until around 1700 AD. There are smaller Maya towns, such as Xculoc, Campeche, which are still occupied today. When Ana Rojas and I visited Xculoc in 1970, it still had an oval plaza and town plan. Oval plazas and village layouts typify the Native American communities in the Nacoochee Valley, where I live.