Remove the Olmec from Juneteenth Mural In Galveston, TX

Remove the Olmec from Juneteenth Mural In Galveston, TX

Started
July 13, 2021
Petition to
Mitchell Historic Properties and 3 others
Victory
This petition made change with 1,042 supporters!

Why this petition matters

We demand the immediate removal of any depiction of the Olmec, Olmec colossal heads, and/or Ancient Mesoamerican culture from the African-American heritage Juneteenth mural made by artist Reginal C. Adams. The mural located in Galveston, TX promotes pseudohistory and ignores scientific DNA studies in favor of the false doctrine that Olmec society disappeared, and further erases the Original Indigenous Amerindians who founded the first ancient cultures in the Americas. The origin of the Olmec colossal heads is not African, as has been rumored for 150 years, but Mesoamerican, said Ann Cyphers, an academic at the Institute of Anthropological Research (IIA) of the UNAM, who together with her collaborators have conducted mitochondrial DNA studies that prove the identity of the Olmecs, the oldest civilization in these lands. 

The erasure 

The expert recalled that theories of African origin and transoceanic migrations are dear to the collective imagination, so "it has been very difficult to shake off these ideas." This type of revisionist depiction of the Olmec Amerindian society is Afrocentric as, "has defined in various ways by artists, educators, scholars, political activists, and other interested persons" who may benefit from promoting racialist and hegemonic views of the role allegedly played by “black peoples” in the formation of civilizations in the Americas.[1] Whether or not the artists were aware of the implications of such imagery, it does not remove their ethical responsibility to revise the mural, as it causes harm to Indigenous Native-Americans fighting for visibility and human rights in the present day.

Ann Cyphers, discovered in 1994 the most recent of the 17 Olmec heads known so far, found in the archaeological site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, in Veracruz, explained that this thesis dates from 1869 and was proposed by José María Melgar and Serrano, who reported the first colossal head (called Hueyapan), in what is now Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, according to a statement from the UNAM.

"Then it was not known of the existence of the Olmec culture, and Melgar proposed that the features of the sculptures corresponded to characters from Ethiopia, black people, mostly because of the features of the face. From there this speculation was born and a controversy was formed that pursues us in Olmec archaeology."

For the researcher, the wide and flattened features of the faces of the colossal heads are explained by the fact that the thrones of the rulers, which were large prisms, were recycled to make the sculptures. Reusing the thrones was important, because, in addition to being a symbol of the ruler, this avoided bringing more rocks from other places. Because they wanted the head to be as large as possible, they accommodated the image of the ruler in the prism and the face was deformed. "That largely clarifies why compressed factions. It is understood, for example, the wide nose and mouth, because no head has protruding elements, everything is compact, glued, it is part of the prism".

The conclusive DNA studies, as explained by the research team -

In excavations carried out over the years at Olmec sites and when scientifically studying various pieces of that civilization, university archaeologists have not found African artifacts; this is the first line of research that rules out the origin in that continent. The second line contemplates DNA studies, which previously could not be done because there were no Olmec burials, "the ones that had been found were made of dust. But we found some in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, and Enrique Villamar Becerril, collaborator of my group, did the mitochondrial DNA study," he explained.

In this regard, Villamar indicated that two burials were shown: one in Loma del Zapote (dating from 200 thousand BC) and another in San Lorenzo (one thousand BC). "From those two individuals, a rib bone sample was taken, and they underwent a procedure to obtain their mitochondrial DNA, the lineage that the mother provides to an individual because it is more feasible to recover it from archaeological remains."

Thus he achieved the classification of this genetic information, called a haplogroup. "The genetic diversity of mitochondrial DNA can be classified according to the similarities that exist in several individuals, and they can share some mutations that make them different from other individuals in different geographic regions of the world."

These differences allow us to define which group they belong to, and thus mitochondrial DNA is classified into haplogroups. "We obtained the haplogroup from these two subjects and came to know that they belong to the A, one of the most abundant among the founding and indigenous populations of America. If they had been African, the haplogroup would be L, which is characteristic of those populations," he emphasized.

In addition, Cyphers remarked, if there were African genetic material in the Olmecs, it would not only be seen in burials but in later populations, as haplogroup L (which was not found here) would have been preserved. "In 300 Mesoamerican burials of different eras, it is not present." On the discovery of the colossal head 17, he commented: "We were looking for houses and suddenly it appeared, it was like a dream. Every new thing contributes to changing the perception of what that culture was like." When describing the Olmecs, Cyphers said: "they were the first civilization of Mesoamerica, powerful rulers; in a word, a civilization."[2]

Final note: To allow the Juneteenth mural to remain when University archaeologists conducted DNA studies on human remains found in Veracruz and verified the origin of the Olmecs: it is Mesoamerican, not African is the erasure of Native American, Amerindian, Indigenous American peoples cultures and achievements.

Thank you in advance for signing and helping protect Ancient-Mesoamerican Amerindian culture from being incorrectly, historically depicted as of African by visual artists with no anthropological background or scientific evidence to sustain the visual claims presented on the mural.

Cordially,

A community of Indigenous Anthropologists, Archaeologists, Historians, Pan-Africans, Scholars, and citizens seeking to protect our respective Indigenous cultures and minimize the harm caused to marginalized members of society, who will be affected by the Afrocentric Olmec origin theory promoted on the Juneteenth Mural. The mural is located in Galveston Tx, made by Reginald C. Adams and a team of artists called The Creatives. The mural was approved by Mitchell Historic Properties and commissioned by Sam Collins.

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Sources:

Haslip‐Viera, Gabriel, Bernard Ortiz De Montellano, and Warren Barbour. "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs." Current Anthropology 38, no. 3 (1997): 419-41. Accessed July 12, 2021. doi:10.1086/204626. [1]

Los Olmecas de San Lorenzo Veracruz (Mexican Archaeology, March-April 2018, Volume XXV, n. 150) by Ann Cyphers, Judith Zurita Noguera, Luis Fernando Hernandez Lara [2]

 

 

 

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This petition made change with 1,042 supporters!

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Decision Makers

  • Mitchell Historic Properties
  • Juneteenth Legacy Project
  • Reginald C. Adams LLC
  • Galveston Mayor - Craig Brown