Olmec Stone Buildings May Rewrite History

Archeologists digging in Copalillo, Mexico, in the remote mountains southwest of Cuernavaca, have unearthed the earliest stone buildings found so far on the North American continent, along with a monumental carved stone head. Confirmed dates for the site, built by the ancient Olmec civilization, are 600 BC to 1200 BC, with preliminary laboratory testing of organic remains indicating dates going back as far as 1400 BC--roughly the time of Tutankhamen in Egypt.

Two layers beneath that material have yet to be excavated. The oldest stone structures previously discovered in North America date from about 200 BC.

Gillett Griffin, director of the Princeton University Art Gallery and a leading Olmec scholar, said, “Copalillo is the most important site being worked on in Mexico. The find means high civilization existed much earlier in Mesoamerica than we thought.”

The Olmecs, who are believed to have founded the “mother civilization” of pre-Columbian America, left behind their typical calling card--a large stone human head, a smaller version of those found on ancient sites in the Gulf Coast swamps of Veracruz and Tabasco.