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Tuxtla Statuette: "Wiener (1922)..., claimed that the inscriptions on the Tuxtla, statuette which was made by the Olmec was engraved with writing used by the Manding speaking people of West Africa.
Although, Wiener did not know anything about the Olmec people, he had found startling linguistic, religious, and anthroplogical data supporting a Manding substratum in Mayan and Aztec culture, and believed that the inscriptions on the Tuxtla statuette was further confirmation of the Manding influence among the Maya."....Athens Academy
Leo Wiener was a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard University and author of many books including the one referenced above. His son Norbert Wiener entered Tufts University at the age of 11 and is responsible for the field of cybernetics.
In this review of “Africa and the Discovery of America, Volume I”, published in the New York Times, in August 1920, the author states Wiener’s thesis as;
“Negroes from the northwestern coast of Africa crossed the Atlantic and landed in America an indefinite number of years before Christopher Columbus’s voyage of discovery in 1492 is the arresting declaration made by Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, in his most recent work, the first volume of which has just been published….
Professor Wiener’s proof of his contention rests primarily upon deductions from the evidence of comparative philology (relationship between languages). He says, in brief that many of the supposedly Indian words recorded by Columbus and the earliest commentators upon his voyages are traceable to African origin, particularly to the languages of those tribes settled around the River Niger”.
Professor Weiner then went on to support his argument by providing evidence that the smoking of tobacco did not originate with the Indians of the New World but that in fact the practice was adopted from West Africans Further, he asserted that yams, sweet potatoes, peanuts and manioc (cassava) were cultivated by the Africans and indeed were eaten and used by them well before they were introduced in the Americas.
The reviewer notes; “Africa and the Discovery of America” will be a bombshell to others than historians: it will doubtless be the father of many a debate among etymologists and archaeologists ; for the acceptance of Professor Wiener’s theory would be tantamount to the corollary that a great part of American archaeology is builded upon the quicksand of fallacy.
Professor Wiener is a scholar whose reputation assures his book an attentive and respectful hearing from the world of scientists to whom it is obviously addressed”.
Here the author proves to be wrong because , no one ever heard of it, (his book) and American archaeology appears to still be built upon the quicksand of fallacy..
“In the brief foreword to his book the author tells us that while working on a “Comparative Grammar of the American Languages” he was confronted with a number of words which seemed “to observe perfectly the phonetic laws, indicative of extreme old age.”….
According to Professor Wiener, as quoted by the reviewer; “ When I began my scrutiny I was firmly convinced, as is the universal belief, that tobacco, manioc, yams, sweet potatoes and peanuts were blessings bestowed upon the world by the Indians. A cursory study excluded the yams and the manioc. Soon the peanuts followed in their wake. Next came the sweet potatoes, and at last the tobacco.
In the first volume I show that the Negroes have had a far greater influence upon American civilization than had heretofore been suspected.”
He says that his studies show that the Indian owes a great deal to the African who in turn owes a great deal to Arabic medical science and religion.
Professor Wiener stated that he as devoted several chapters detailing how unreliable and inaccurate Columbus and his chroniclers were particularly about what they found in the Americas, supposing that they were in the Indies. He describes Columbus and Ramon Pane as liars and forgers.
The reviewer goes on to describe the sleuthing the Professor engaged in to reach some of his conclusions;
“By what can only be described as etymological sleuthing and by steps too technical and too involved for repetition here;…words alleged by the commentators to used by the Indians for gold, canoe, frog, snail, root etc. are all in reality corruptions or adaptations of words used by the multitudinous negro races of Africa, particularly by the Mandingos.
He notes that this is also true of the word tobacco and the words for smoking etc..
Illustrative of the first two stories?
On the right is one of the giant stone Olmec heads, here compared to a man of African heritage. It appears that the Olmec heads may have both African and Asian characteristics like people of Samoan or Tongan heritage, for example.
Columbus was supposed to have discovered the Americas in 1492. In Mexico as in other parts of North and South America, there is a historical time period known as –pre-Columbian-the line demarking the influence of European culture on the Americas vs the indigenous cultures that were here when Columbus made landfall. Since Columbus is thought to be the first, no other cultures were thought to have influenced the indigenous cultures..
Archaeologists discovered artifacts which are discussed in this 1912 article that suggest that the Chinese were here 4,500 years before Columbus.
“London, November 23.—A sensation has been created in British scientific circles by advices received from sir Martin Conway, Prof. William Niven, and Senor Ramon Mena of the discovery of absolute Mongolian remains only a couple of hours walk from the City of Mexico, thereby confirming the hypothesis that has long been held that the most ancient civilization of Mexico and Peru preceding that of the Toltecs and the Aztecs was of Mongolian Origin.”
One of the older cultures of South and Central America were the Olmecs and it is claimed that this advanced culture was established by either Africans, Asians or travelers from India. Perhaps all three influenced the Olmec culture.
Back to the article; close to and partially under the City of Tootihuacan, the scientists uncovered a still more ancient city known as Otumbia and an advanced civilization which preceeded the Aztecs and Toltecs by hundreds of years. This ancient city, approximately 19 miles from Mexico, it was supposed may have even been older than Babylon and Nineveh.
According to the 1912 New York Times article, the excavation had been financed by the Mexican government and that in digging down through 20 centuries of earth they found among other things, a large pyramid.
“It is 700 feet square at the base and its apex is 187 feet high, while many of the giant blocks of stone in its massive walls must have required extraordinary engineering skill to handle. This pyramid also has its riddle, for the axis of the main gallery is coincidental with the magnetic meridian.
Prof. Niven discovered then the biggest surprise of all was that buried below the first two ancient cities was yet a third ancient city.
‘In what appears to have been a tomb of the lowest city, whose age so far defies calculation, Prof. Niven found the clay image of a “Chinaman”, with oblique eye slits, padded coat, flowing trousers and slippers. Only the queue was lacking to make a complete portrait of a Mandarin of the recently defunct Chinese Empire…….
The image is about seven inches in length, and where the arms are broken the edges of the clay show red…..In the ears are huge rings and on the head is a skull cap with a small button in the center, precisely like that worn by the modern Mandarin…The coat, which is loose and of the type still worn by the older Chinese is fastened with a frog and button..
The Prof. notes that the figure found thirty feet below the surface was not made by the Aztecs but proves that the ancient Mexicans had contact with the ancient “Mongol type”. The room in which it was found was approximately 30 feet square and was most likely a tomb.
“The age of the figure is difficult to determine without further data. Circumstances however warrant the rough guess that about 5,000 years ago Chinese navigators crossed the Pacific in their primitive junks and discovered America thousands of years before Columbus was born.”
“Long Beach, Cal., March 16_-B.F. Bond, who has just returned from a trip in the San Jacinto Mountains, reports that he found the ruins of an ancient city of unknown origin, hidden in the mountains. It contained about one thousand stone houses.
Charles F. Lummis, librarian of Los Angeles and noted archaeologist, says no such ruins have ever been reported before, and that the discovery is of the greatest importance to archaeologists and historians of the early period of California.”
Bond told the reporter that he had sent information to the Smithsonian Institution concerning the find, which is surely the quickest way to consign information about the find to the dustbin of history.
Bond goes on to describe the mysterious, unknown city in the mountains;.(Certainly, any location with one thousand houses is a city or a town?) The houses were all one room dwellings of two distinct sizes; the older and larger ones were approximately 18 feet by 16 feet and the newer, smaller houses were 10 feet by 12 feet.
The houses had all been built along well planned streets paved with huge blocks of stone.
At the widest point of the mountain city, Bond counted noted that it was seven streets wide.
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