Guatemala's 'FAT BOYS' - A Pre-Columbian Mystery

One of the so-called "Fat Boy" sculptures located in the town plaza of La Democracia, Guatemala. Originally unearthed at nearby Monte Alto, it was labeled Monument 5 and is believed by Parsons to date to about 500 B.C. The magnetic properties of these sculptures were first discovered in 1979 by my student assistant, Paul Dunn of the Dartmouth class of 1981.

Despite their crudity as works of "art," the "Fat Boys" have one characteristic which lends them a true air of mystery: Many of them are magnetic! This discovery, made by my field assistant Paul Dunn and myself in 1979, took everyone, including the archaeological community, by complete surprise. If the sculpture depicts a head, it is often magnetic in the right temple. If it depicts a body, its magnetic pole is usually near the navel. However, no plugs of magnetic material have been inserted into the boulders at these points. Rather, at these places the sculptures appear to contain enough of a concentration of magnetite, or magnetic iron ore (Fe304) to attract a compass needle. Moreover, these localized zones of magnetism usually have an opposite pole of attraction situated scarcely more than 10 cm (4 in.) away. Thus, where the magnetic lines of force enter a head above the right ear, they usually leave it below the ear. And if the magnetic lines of force enter a body to the left of the navel, they tend to exit it to the right of the navel. Each sculpture, therefore, usually has two oppositely charged poles situated so closely together as to suggest a kind of U-shaped magnetic field.

Today, eleven of these statues are found in La Democracia, Guatemala, arrayed along two sides of the town's plaza, while the twelfth stands near the entrance to the museum. They reportedly were assembled from the newly cleared sugarcane fields surrounding the village sometime after 1950. Five of the statues depict human bodies, six depict human heads, and one is fashioned in the shape of a large bowl or receptacle. Of the humanoid figures, four of the five bodies have magnetic properties, as do four of the six heads. If we begin on the northwest corner of the plaza, we find the following patterns occurring in a counterclockwise direction: