Summary

In 1859, a six-foot tall stone sculpture of a human head was found buried in Mexico’s southern isthmus near Tres Zapotes. In 1938 Matthew W. Stirling, Director of the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology came to the area to view the statue up close. Stirling figured there was a buried city underneath the mounds and led a team to dig up the finely sculpted head. It led to the discovery of a then unknown culture that Stirling named the Olmec. It was an advanced society that developed a numbering system consisting of dots and bars similar to that developed by the Maya. There was evidence that the Tres Zapotes culture was in existence in 32 BCE before any known Maya site and that the Maya originated much earlier and west of what was thought to be its homeland.

Italian Hilarion Daza...