The most ancient findings at this archeological site in southwestern Gautemala date back some 3000 years and the excavations are still under way. From what appears to have been an Olmec trading center at first has became the earliest known blending and later florescence of Maya culture, absorbing and then expanding the Olmec knowledge of calendars, astronomy and mathematics.
The Olmecs are considered to be the first civilization of Meso America, and arrived on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico around 1400 B.C. From where, no one knows except that they had a taste for large well-carved multi-ton statues of men with negroid features and a knowledge of magnetism. They incorporated the properties of north-south polarization into their statuary, the alignment of their cities and may well have used magnetic effects for rituals, if not also for navigation.
Some sixteen kilometers northwest of Retalhuleu, in the archeological park of Takalik Abaj are several Olmec statues, but not all exhibit any magnetic effects: of the six weathered stone carvings flanking the stela # 11 and Altar 12 of the Plaza Tucur Balam, only three exhibit definite responses to a compass. Which ones? The two end statues and the carving of the frog, each of which demonstrates magnetic properties in the region of the right temple or side of the head. Oddly enough, these same properties and effects are also observable in a series of ‘Olmecoid’ stone heads and full figure carvings in the plaza of the farming town of La Democracia, some 60 miles to the east.
A large stone carved turtle several feet in length was found in the ruins of Izapa, near the coast. There are magnetic poles at each end of what may have been an altar. To the north west, near the Mexican coast and the Olmec center of San Lorenzo, a 3.5 centimeter polished metal bar with magnetic properties and dating back to 1400-1000 BC was found. If it was used as a compass, as some believe, it was pre-date the Chinese discovery by a thousand years. Round hematite mirrors or what is thought to be mirrors or decorations were also found. Was magnetism and its effects used in a ritual? Why else would ancient stone masons deliberately orient their carvings? In the museum of the farm known as El Baul, not far from La Democracia, is a stone carving of a jaguar, an Olmec primary deity. That statue exhibits magnetic fields in each raised paw. It’s more than enough to make one wonder why, who and when?
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