The Olmec Cave Mystery Nobody's Solved

There's something about Olmec monuments that doesn't make sense to me. People emerging out of caves is a common theme in Olmec stone carvings, but there's no caves in the Olmec heartland. It's a lowland, swampy place with almost no stone resources and definitely no caves. So where are those Olmec caves? I think I know. Let's talk about it. First, let me explain what I mean about Olmec cave iconography. It's best seen in the megalithic altar stones at La Venta and San Lorenzo. They aren't actually altars, they're thrones. I'll show you how we know that near the end of this video. Each of those altar stones have the same basic image on the front. A human in a big headdress emerging from a cave. There's variation on the theme. Sometimes the person is carrying a swaddled baby out in front of them. Other times they're holding a baton down near their knees. Sometimes it's just a human face in the cave, not the whole person. Another very common element is showing the cave as the mouth of a creature we call the earth monster. We can see his eyes above the cave and his fangs around it. Is this earth monster a god? Or maybe he's some sort of supernatural force of nature? We're not sure. But on those altars, the caves are his mouth leading down into the earth like a cave. The best preserved examples of this are altars 4 and 5 at La Venta. Altar 4 really shows the earth monster's face above the cave entrance. You can really see his eyes and fangs clearly. Altar 5 shows the baby theme very well. He's swaddled and being carried out of the cave by a guy in a big headdress. The baby's face marks show him as a jaguar transformer and that links him to shamanistic transformation and links that to our cave emergence theme. Altars 1, 2, and 3 also have cave iconography, but they're eroded and broken so they don't show up on the internet much. But they are on display in La Venta Park, the museum with all of the monuments. Once we see the earth monster associated with the cave, then we can see his face elsewhere at La Venta. Most notably on the line of stela that once stood out in front of La Venta's Great Pyramid. In that context, they're on top of a scaffolding and their mouths aren't clearly caves, but they are definitely the same guy or creature. Now, La Venta was the second great Olmec city, preceded by San Lorenzo. San Lorenzo went from roughly 1400 to 1000 BCE and then La Venta went from 900 to 500 BCE. Monument 14 at San Lorenzo is another altar stone, eroded but also clearly with the cave theme on its front face. The guy emerging from its cave holds the swaddled baby. And on the side is a guy in a headdress that looks like a top hat, just like the guys on the sides of La Venta's altar 4. It's definitely the same cave iconography theme, but the one at San Lorenzo must be from at least 1000 BCE, if not earlier. But where are these caves? The closest mountains are the Tuchlas. The Olmecs got their basalt for their monuments from there. But it's a volcanic range without the kind of deep caves we find in limestone mountain ranges. To date, no evidence of Olmec activities in caves has been found in the Tuchlas. Now, we could say that the caves on the altar stones are just underworld symbolism, not actual caves at all. And while that's probably at least partially correct, where did the Olmec come up with the idea that the underworld is accessible by cave? It could be influence from another culture group. But at 1000 BCE, who else was there? Maybe early Maya or Zapotecs, who both live in mountainous regions with caves. But at those early dates, neither made any kind of cave imagery that we could connect to this. But you know where does have very similar cave iconography? A region of Olmec activity far to the west that I refer to as the Western Olmec. In the states of Morelos and Guerrero, hundreds of miles from the Olmec heartland, are two big Olmec sites and two important caves. The two sites are Chalcatsingo and Teopondiquanitlán. The two caves are Huixlahuaca and Oxtoltitlán, all tongue twisters. All of them are full of Olmec iconography and of Olmec age. But most archaeologists consider them simply Olmec-influenced sites, not actual Olmec people. Back in the 1940s, the famous artist and archaeologist Miguel Covarrubias first hypothesized that they were truly Olmec sites. And I agree with him. Chalcatsingo has a bunch of massive Olmec sculptures and carvings on boulders. Monument 1, way up on the mountainside above the site, is carved inside a cave's mouth. And what is the carving of? A guy in a headdress sitting inside a cave. And on top of that cave's carving's mouth is a big eye. It's probably the eye of the Earth Monster, just like on the La Venta altars. Monument 9, famously just returned to Mexico after being stolen in the 1980s, is also the Earth Monster. The center of the piece is the monster's mouth wide open, a hole going right through the stone. Walking around the site, I saw two other carvings, both people's heads poking out of caves. Chalcatsingo's dates are 900-500 BCE, the same as La Venta. Teopantli-Cuantitlan is older, starting as early as 1400 BCE. At about 1000 BCE, they build a beautiful sunken courtyard in the center of the site. On all four sides are big images of the Earth Monster. Between the Earth Monsters and the subterranean symbolism of the sunken courtyard, there's our cave imagery again. But it's the western caves that really make my argument here. Huislahuaca cave has Olmec paintings deep inside, dating from 1200-900 BCE. But it's mural 1 at Oxtoltitlan cave that's the smoking gun. That cave is more of a grotto, an overhang. It is a cave but not very deep. It's up on a mountaintop in Guerrero, not far from Teopantli-Cuantitlan. Man, that site is so hard to say. Mural 1 in Oxtoltitlan is a full-color painting of a person in a bird headdress and costume sitting on top of a big rectangular altar stone, with the face of the Earth Monster right on its front side. The depiction of the face is just like the one on Altar 4 in La Venta, hundreds of miles to the east. Once we thought it dated to 900-500 BCE. But a 2017 redating of it came back at 1200-900 BCE. They dated how long the calcification on the mural had been growing. Cool science. But the important thing is that those older dates are now present. 1200-900 BCE makes it contemporary with or even earlier than San Lorenzo's altar with the cave iconography. Now, look at how this big stone is being used in the cave painting. The figure is sitting on it. That's not an altar. That's a throne. Or at least a big rock used to sit upon. The throne idea has been around for a while. But this mural, only found in the 1970s, really settled the argument. At least for me. There are also other monuments that I see as supporting evidence. One is in the Jalapa Museum and the other one is in the Viermosa Seacole Museum. Both are just fragments of monuments. But both clearly have rectangular stones with legs dangling off the side. The top figure was broken off, but it's clearly someone sitting on top of the stone. Just like the figure in Oxotitlan Cave. So, where did the Olmecs get their cave imagery? I think it was from their western brothers. And that really challenges the traditional narrative. But I consider it my job to do things like that. We're supposed to be pushing our understanding forward, not simply agreeing with previous generations of archaeologists. There's so much to learn and really a lot to just rethink. If you like what you heard here, please follow me and support me through Patreon.