Customer Reviews

The Mystery of the Olmecs

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I have been reading David Hatcher Childress' books for over a decade, and I am routinely amazed at how much information he can pack into one book! Time and time again, it's another fine book to ponder ancient mysteries that are glossed over in other publications. "The Mystery of the Olmecs" is no exception, including a great selection of photos and maps to help guide us along on the journey of discovering more about this enigmatic people who were the first on the scene in Central America. Highly recommended!Sacred Places Around the World (108 Destinations) (Sacred Places: 108 Destinations series)

Childress' "Mystery of the Olmecs" is a good quick read. It explores many theories regarding Olmec history. He mentions the Olmecs custom of flattening their heads. Childress also makes note of drilling a whole in ones head to become more psychically powerful. David Childress thinks the remnants of elongating heads through headwraps may be found in turban wear.

The Olmecs as well as many other cultures, consider elongated heads more handsome and represented higher intellect. Having been called a "bean head" growing up I wonder if there is any truth to this.

Childress makes some pretty interesting connections between the Olmec and Shang Dynasties. I don't buy into the theory of an army of Chinese eunchs representing the Olmec in any way. And I believe the hallucinogenic mushroom angle a bit far fetched.

Childress definitely supports the diffusionist theory vs the isolationist, and so do I. He makes comparisons of the writing script of the Shang & Olmec Dynasty and brings out many similarities. This book is one of the most well illustrated with many Olmecs images in Guatemala never seen before. I enjoy Hatcher Childress' Lost cities series and place this book right along side them.

I've been reading his books & articles for quite some time and no one seems to convey as much information as he does. This is the most & up to date info on the Olmecs you'll find anywhere. The Olmecs pose more questions than answers and so they are ignored my the mainstream. When that happens it is we, the public who are deprived of any details about them. As most people don't even know the name let alone the mystery of these people. But I was surprised he didn't include a passage from Alan Alford's book "Gods of the New Millennium". A chapter in that book may provide clues & answers to who the Olmecs were & where they may have come from.

Sacred Earth: Places of Peace and PowerI have been studying the archaeology of the Olmecs, Maya and numerous other Pre-Columbian cultures for more than thirty years and during that time have read a large number of books on these subjects. One of the complaints that I and other scholars of these subjects have often made concerns the lack of a book that comprehensively deals with brilliant and mysterious culture of the Olmecs. Mr. Childress has produced such a book. One of thing things I like most about this book is that Childress presents a wealth of material from both the orthodox archaeological vantage point and also that of the more esoteric, or alternative. He also includes pages and pages and pages of fine, interesting and quite rare photographs and drawings of Olmec sculptures and structures. This is a very fine book and one well worth reading for travelers (both arm-chair and real) and scholars. I particularly feel this book should be suggested reading for all university students interested in the archaeology and cultures of ancient Mexico.......Martin Gray, anthropologist and photographer, author of Sacred Earth and SacredSites.com

Having read Davids entire series on lost cities this book is a good by product of alot of his life experience. Yes there is some of his speculation but what lost civilization does not contain a fair amount of speculation? To say this book is worthless becouse it does not conform with known history is not fair. It is not meant to be a study so much as a basic guide to the weirdness that is the Olmecs. What do we really know of the Olmecs that anyone can give a accurate history of them? Where they Africans? Or where they europeans or Ancient Jews who can say. Possibly they where all these like a modern USA. There is not enough solid proof of anything. What does seem very likely is that many people in ancient times DID travel to the new world. I give David a big thumbs up for he is actually a man who goes into the field. He has been around the world and im sure has come to conclutions that many less versed and traveled men have not. His books are allways fun reads and his lost cities are allways cool.

As a serious fan of all things Mexican, I was delighted to see this book on a subject which has been largely ignored. Most authors know that they don't know enough to complete a book - even a short one with lots of pictures. Childress simply poses questions and answers them as completely as current knowledge allows. Have read some of his other books. He is an excellent author to add to your library.

The book is sometime poor in the sources but very true in the parts the author mentions another book by Mr. Diehl who represents the other extreme site of explanantion of history and calls himself a scientist. Clearly the Olmecs represented a multicultural society and clearly the olmec sites in Tabasco where partly destroyed of so called US-archaeologists in the 40ies and 50ies (see original articles in the national Geographics of these days). Partly the remains (sarcophagus of the olmec dragon, megalithic columns) vanished and are nowhere documented.
So it is good to read this book an forget it's mistakes.

David Hatcher Childress is an author who believes in the ancient astronaut theory and wrote this book to use the Olmecs to back up this theory. He has picked a good subject, as little is known of these very ancient peoples who started one of the early civilizations of the Americas.

Were they of African descent? That is one of the many questions people ask as the giant sculptures do resemble people of the African continent. With no remains, it is difficult to prove that idea one way or another. Some pictures of the locals still living in the area do resemble the persons depicted on the statues, so they could be descendants of them. A simple DNA test could prove the theory of them coming from Africa.

Mr Childress also looks at the mysterious elongated skulls of Peru and wonders if they are of extraterrestrials. There is a small sample of which will have their DNA tested to answer this question once and for all.

The book is relatively short, and Mr Childress also adds the elongated skulls of the Egyptian royal family to try to tie them together with the peoples of the Americas and their cultures. Many do think there was visitation between the two, and voyages in modern times of the boats that would of been used suggest it was possible. Still, it does not show evidence of extraterrestrials, and that takes major proof such as DNA of the skulls.

It is an interesting book and a fun read, but it was much shorter with little about the Olmecs themselves. I also don't see the uproar over the possibility of people coming from both Asia and Africa to settle in the Americas during this time frame. It may not be recorded, but it is possible it happened. We do need the evidence to prove that, and I think Mr Childress shows quite a bit. On the extraterrestrial front, not so much.

I absolutely loved it. all of his books are great. I do not know how he has amassed so much information. He not only gives his view point about things, but experts opions, too.
at least they think they are experts.

Childress has touched on the Olmecs in Lost Cities of North & Central America and his reprint of In Search of Quetzalcoatl: The Mysterious Heritage of American Civilization. Here he expands and adds new material (though Childress fans will recognize some old parts). In the style of his Lost Cities books, this volume brings together the research and theories of a wide spectrum of authors. A Cliff Notes of Olmec research. Some excellent sections on diffusion of cultures from other continents and extensive photos. He only mentions aliens once or twice, and if he would stop that altogether, maybe bookstores would stop putting this on the "metaphysics" shelf and place it in the history section where it belongs. He mentions the myth about Genesis having to contradictory creation accounts - see The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis for why they aren't contradictory. He also mentions that a possible cataclysm that ended the Ice Age and inspired ancient myths. For more on this, see the excellent The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. Overall, an excellent addition to your Mesoamerican studies.

It's also interesting how scholars look at the African-looking statues and say it's only a coincidence and call diffusionists "Afrocentrists" who must be racists because they don't think Indians could do anything on their own. Obviously, most diffusionists don't think that way, but they'll accuse the no-diffusion scholars of the same type of racism for saying Africans weren't advanced enough to cross the ocean. Ah, scholarship at its best.