The Sameness of It All: Alternative Theories of Mexican Statues, 1884-Today

It fascinates me how false claims, no matter how old, continue to be repeated endlessly, almost without change, century after century, even in the face of new evidence. Consider the case of Mexican statuary. The various human figure sculptures of Teotihuacan, the Maya, the Olmec, etc. are currently used as evidence for the following fringe theories:

• The sculptures depict extraterrestrial beings (Erich von Daniken, Ancient Aliens, etc.)
• The sculptures depict immigrants from Atlantis or a lost civilization (Graham Hancock)
• The sculptures depict immigrants from Africa (Afrocentrists)
• The sculptures depict immigrants from China (Gavin Menzies)

All four of these current theories derive from nineteenth-century racists who were unwilling to imagine that the native peoples their governments were so busy trying to eradicate had been responsible for the archaeological remains they were exploring. Take this 1884 passage from the French archaeologist Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay:

“One finds, among these masks that reproduce types of various Indian races with felicity and sometimes with art, strange faces that seem not to belong to America. Among the specimens reproduced in our engraving one may observe a negro with thick lips, flat nose, and woolly hair. One sees, also, a Chinese head, and I possess representative types of the while race, and Japanese masks. One may observe heads with retreating foreheads like the profiles of Palenque, and others with the straight brow of a Grecian profile. They are orthognathous or prognathous, the faces are smooth or bearded; it is an extraordinary mixture that proves how many races must have mingled or succeeded each other on this old continent.” (La anciennes villes du Nouveau Monde, trans. Zelia Nuttall)

Or, of course, they were just depicting the wide variety of facial features that can be found in any population. No, of course that can’t be it. Apparently many Victorians assumed all those brown people look too much alike for that. Not all Victorians were so blinded, though, especially those with ties to native cultures. Mexican historian Manuel Orozco y Berra wrote, for example, in 1880-1 that “it matters little […] that they should resemble Jews, Asiatics, or Egyptians; they are not such, in truth…” (Historia Antigua de Mexico, vol. 2, trans. Zelia Nuttall).

So, as we can see, the theory that peoples from all over the world were depicted in Mexican art is exceedingly old, and modern writers are merely emphasizing one aspect or another of this old theory. Never mind, of course, that the clay heads bear the closest resemblance to actual Mexicans rather than imaginary voyagers from continents once thought more worthy of providing a suitably noble prehistory for the New World.