Megalithic Marvels - Hugh Newman: Origins of the Olmec Culture (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

In this episode I feature part 2 of an interview I did with author & researcher Hugh Newman regarding Mexico’s mysterious Olmec culture, who is infamously known by the gigantic head statues they crafted. If you didn’t hear part 1, I would recommend you go back & listen to it first for context. In part 2 of this interview, we will discuss the various strange olmec artifacts that can be seen at the Mexico City museum - many of them featuring humanoid & animal-human hybrid characteristics. SHOW NOTES Egypt Tour Follow Megalithic Marvels on the following platforms: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/megalithicm... Blog - https://megalithicmarvels.com/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpiP... Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/megalithicma... TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@megalithicmarvels Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/10186... Twitter - https://twitter.com/MegMarvels

Marvels. Derek Olson here to reconstruct the prehistoric past with you. In this episode, I feature part two of an interview I previously did with author and researcher Hugh Newman regarding Mexico's mysterious Omec culture. I find this topic absolutely fascinating. And if you didn't hear part one, I would really recommend you go back and listen to it first for context. So in part two of this interview, we will discuss.

the various strange Olmec artifacts that can be seen at the Mexico City Museum. Many of them featuring humanoid and animal hybrid characteristics. We will also discuss the ancient sites that the Olmec were connected to do

as well as the legends relating to ancient giants of Mexico. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. Before we get into it, I want to remind you that registration is live for our Megalithic Marvels of Egypt

tour coming this May, 2023, and it's going to be the trip of a lifetime. I want to invite you to join me and renowned Egyptologist and tour guide Mohammed Ibrahim for a 12-day expedition to see and touch the world's greatest superstructures.

For a limited time, you can get $300 off registration by using code Egypt 2023. That's all together in all caps. And I really hope you will consider joining us. We're going to visit 20 plus sites. We're going to cruise down the Nile River,

which is an incredible experience all by itself. We are going to soar in hot air balloons over the Luxor sunrise, ride camels along the great pyramids. But what I love about our tour and having Muhammad as our host is Muhammad is the only Egyptologist I know of that believes that a pre-dynastic, civilization of megalithic builders created the pyramids. That's where he breaks with the mainstream Egyptological community.

And so what makes this tour so special with him is that at every site, he's going to point out all the evidence for lost ancient technology that probably 99% of your other tourists miss. So he's going to show us what appears to be laser-like cuts into super hard granite. and what looks like core drill holes in megalithic blocks. And our tour will culminate with an amazing two hours visit, private visit inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, where we're going to explore every chamber and passageway.

I hope you'll consider joining us. You can click the link in the show notes below or go to megalithic marvels.com forward slash tours for all of the info. Okay, let's get to part two of my interview with Hugh Newman now. Well, I am excited to be joined by author and researcher Hugh Newman. Today, Hugh has written several books such as stone circles, Megalithic Studies in Stones, and Giants on Record, among others. Hugh, thanks so much for joining me today.

Yes, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it. In your video series, and again, for our audience, you've got to go to Megalithomania YouTube channel. and check out Hughes video series on the Olmec recently, but you feature so many great, you know, Olmec artifacts from the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology. I want to ask you about a couple of them, but was there one that just fascinated you most

in the Mexico City Museum there? There's quite a lot there, to be honest with, they've got a good selection there. It's quite impressive, actually. They've got, you know, like I said, two Amec heads, but one fascinated me the most. To be honest with you,

I don't, I mean, Monument 19 is probably the most fascinating Olmec's artifact carving of them all because it depicts what looks like a gentleman in profile holding like one of those man bags with a serpent, a plume serpent going around him. He looks like he's in some kind of device, almost like the lid of Palencai, like Lorpe Hells 2. So that is absolutely fascinating. I think the original was on display in that museum. They have a copy at Leventa site and a copy at Leventa site and a copy at Leventa.

to Bilahamosa park there. But that is really interesting and that has all sorts of symbolism and it's the oldest depiction of a plume serpent and this was then became big, big kind of religious thing in Mayan, Toltec, mixed tech, Teotakan and Aztec worlds after that. So they may have been the first to kind of bring this tradition of the plume serpent or Kessel Corotal or Ku Klum or different names given to him by different cultures. And that really became stronger in Toltec types. So the fact that you've got the original piece there with all this symbolism

that was way before anything else is really, really interesting. It's also the quality of the stone carving is insane. It's like what you find in the peak of stone technology in Egypt. You're finding that here. This is what I think there's a connection because you look at the style, quality of stonework as well. But if you go to the National Music Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, you've got Olmechead, you've got one of their graves, one of the tombs made of these basalt columns found from Leventa. You've got you got the Tuxle of the Statue where, which is like a jadeite piece, it's like this big.

You know, it's like this big. And that was found not at a particular Olmec site, but it's got all these calendar carvings on it and so forth with this sort of cleft lip and this sort of half man, half kind of. animal. And there's also one called the wrestler as well, which is almost like this Asian looking gentleman, kind of in a yoga pose, almost like it's started to wrestle, but it's got a moustache, the beard, and it's just one piece of stone, but it's carved beautifully. It's about three feet tall. And so there's a few amazing pieces that's worth checking out. But if people want to see a whole load of Olmec stuff in Europe at the moment, there's a big exhibition going on in Paris

where many of these many of these omic kind of pieces have been moved to so how up a museum and some pieces from the National Museum of Apology in Mexico City are over there at the moment

so some of them aren't there in Mexico so it's worth noting that if you're going to be in Mexico there's a few pieces that are missing yeah I was fascinated by several of these artifacts that you referenced in museum, yeah, the wrestler that looks clearly oriental. You've got, I think there was a guy named Almano or an artifact named Almano who's got this big elongated skull. And then there was all the little jade miniature figurines. It seemed to have really large elongated skulls. And then I think

you called it column two. It was like a humanoid looking figure that had those bulbous features, you would say, with almost sunglasses he was wearing. Do you think there might, the skull elongation of the Omec, could that have been more than just cradle headboarding? Could there be genetic markers in there, maybe like we see in Paracas, Peru, with some of those skulls? Possible, yeah, that's one thing worth considering. The problem with this part of the world is the humid kind of climate here

just destroys all the bones. and so there's very few skulls. Some have survived, but these are from later than the Olmec times. But there are some other skulls found further south that have obvious signs of cranial deformation, trappanning. And some like you find in Pyrrachus, different parts of Puroblivia,

are oversized elongation. It's like they're much bigger, wider, or longer than they should be if it was a normal skull being altered from birth. And so this has raised quite a few questions, and there's some very strange looking skulls, which really have no explanation. We know the Star Child skull, I believe, was found in Mexico,

and that's caused the huge sensation. There's a very similar one in Pyracchus in Peru. And so, yeah, I mean, one of, there is a whole ancient aliens element to this that a lot of people talk about, that the fact that the old met culture just emerged from nowhere, it just was fully fledged, fully advanced, stone carving technology just arrived, boom, they knew what they were doing and they influenced

all the cultures thereafter. They brought a very sophisticated calendar with them. There's proof now that they invented a long-count calendar that supposedly ended on December the 21st, 2012. There's also evidence that they invented the Zulkin sacred 260-day calendar, which represents the gestation cycle, but it's also the sacred calendar. they kind of synchronize every 52 years which is when they would rebuild pyramids the whole fire ceremony and so forth and so there's a lot of these things that got taken

from the Ulma into the Mayan world and they were obviously a big influence but whether the skulls naturally like that is just a big mystery no one really knows but there's so many depictions of this elongation that either they were all cradle boarding themselves or they just looked like that Is it true that no skeletons of the Olmec have been found that we know of?

Not officially. I mean, because of, you know, further south, yes. In actual Olmec land, very few bones are being found because of the climate. The humidity, the dampness just disintegrates the bones, unfortunately. So that is a pity because they have found Olmec sites like Chalkat-Zingo, which is south of Mexico City. You've got Clatilco in Mexico City, which has been destroyed now. You've got Zachatatala. That's also south of Mexico City and Aquarovaca, the town city.

And you've got Chimalakaland and other sites, which appeared. Some of them have got bones and skeletons from. Some of them are elongated skulls. But we don't know if they're original Olmec skulls and bones and skeletons. So there's a big question mark about that still. It was very interesting in your, I think it was your last video you posted about the Omecs in the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology. There was like two humanoid-type looking skulls. I think you said they might have dated to 5,000 BC, one almost looked chrome magnum-like.

Are those related in any way to Omec or do you think that's totally separate? I'm not sure because I think they were found near Pueblo, which was an Omec area. but because of the dating, officially, they're earlier than the Olmec, but they're unusual because that type of scarlet type of feature wasn't supposed to be in Mexico at that time. So they're an anomaly. But there are other skulls in the museum which are fully elongated, some that have got giant jaws, like we find some of the giants that would be researching. And these ones almost seem like they're anomalous.

Who were these people? where they kind of explorers or travelers from a different culture, where they connected with Kessel Poyato, the traditions say that he arrived potentially that long ago because the official long-count calendar, who the Olmex worked with first, dates to 3,114 BC. So that's 5,000 years ago, even though these could be older than that. And so, yeah, who they were, we don't know,

but they're one of the anomalies. I mean, imagine what else is hidden down in, you know, the basements, back rooms, museums. What we're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. One more question about the Omex. You've written and talked about in some of your presentations about, I think it's the quinamensian giants of the Gulf Coast of Mexico. And there's even this old drawing of locals killing one.

There's old newspaper reports, I believe, about 13 and 15 foot, like giant skeletons being found in this area. could that giant tribe be connected to the Olmex in any way or is that separate as well? No, it could be. There is, I mean, some people even think the quinamets and giants are the Olmex. That is one of the, it's very confusing. I've been looking into, me and JJ have been looking into this actually, looking into the different, the old, the five worlds of the Aztecs and the Mayans talked about. And before them, and they're going back to different worlds, there was a time, and there were different.

destruction, different types of destruction. One of the oldest worlds was where the Quinamets and Giants, they built places like Tiwotakan, Chaloo and other sites, and they got destroyed by a flood. But other stories say, an interpretation suggests they were actually destroyed and killed off by the Olmex when they came in. And so we just started looking into this, and we're looking at different theories on this.

So whether they were the same people, don't know, but they might have been separate cultures, battling each other. The Quintametson are really interesting. The image you talk about is from Codex Vaticanus, and that shows a whole bunch of locals just basically killing a giant and tearing his guts out, things like this. It was pretty scary. But they go back to a really early era, this idea of Quina Metsonians and Giants. Officially, you know, in tradition, they were the builders of Teotan.

They were the builders of Chalula, which then got taken over and became a Ketal-Kuatel, dedicated plume serpent pyramid. They were even linked with Tlaolog, Tlauq, the rain god, amongst other things. He was, he became famous really later, because of the Tlauac statue, which was found in Lake Texcoco, was an Aztec thing, even though it's dated earlier than the Aztecs. He was around at the time of Tealataka, at least 2,000 years ago, because he's actually depicted there multiple times on the pyramid of Kessel Kualatil, as well as other other statues. And he was said to be the king or the leader of the quinamets and giants.

So he was a giant himself, clearly, and he's depicted as so. Interestingly, there are other statues that here were to come. There's one that was the consort of Clalloch. It's either he or she, they're not sure. That was outside the moon pyramid at the very end of the site. And that's a quinamets in giant as well. They're also called the quinine's or the quinamemes. or the Quinametsia, slightly different names to them.

But these go back very far in tradition. And even Hernon Cortes, when he came over in 1519, he heard stories about the giants. He was even shown a giant bone, and he had one in his possession, which was supposedly sent back to Spain. But what happened to that, we don't know. Then we have all these news accounts of giants

all across Mexico, up to 15 feet tall, giant bones, skulls, teeth, other such things. All along Baja, California, you get it. it get it up in a Sonora desert. We wrote about the Sonora story with Paxton Hayes and from the Smithsonian in our book Giants on record and we're now I'm currently just I'm working on further writing projects. One of them is going to be focused on Mexico, Olmex, but I'm looking at the giants of Mexico as a kind of focus. So there's a lot going on with that here. All the early traditions talk about this. Very strongly, all the Spanish

conquests the doors, they heard about it when they came over because the Aztecs were telling them all these old stories of these giants. And so there's definitely something in that. And yeah, and it goes down into Guatemala. I'll be show photos from Honduras of giant skeleton. That may have been found at Kapan. So even into Mayan times and Aztec times, some of these giants still existed. Well, this has been a fascinating interview, Hugh. Thanks so much for your time today.

And for those listening or watching, make sure and follow Hugh. He's on Instagram at Hugh Newman 1, I believe. We just posted a couple of his photos from Mexico. Follow the Megalithomania Facebook group. Great group to jump in and see all of his videos. And then what's the Megalithromania website, Hugh? Just megalithamania.co.uk. Dotco.uk.

That's got links to his books. And I'm really excited about it. Sounds like your upcoming books. So, man, thanks again for your time. Keep up the great work. And we'll do this again, hopefully in the future. All right. Thanks a lot.

They appreciate it. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. A reminder, please make sure to subscribe to this podcast if you enjoy it. And until next time, keep exploring.