Guatemala's 'FAT BOYS' - A Pre-Columbian Mystery
Bianca:
'The Fat Boys' - A pre-Columbian mystery
Sept. 3, 1979
Time Magazine
They are big and roly-poly, with human heads and torsos but no sexual markings. Standing majestically in the town plaza of La Democracia (pop. 2,000) in southern Guatemala, the dozen pre-Columbian statues were excavated from a nearby ceremonial site and are a favorite target of tourist cameras. Now the "Fat Boys," as they are called, are becoming objects of scientific curiosity as well.
Examining them with a hand compass earlier this year, Dartmouth Geographer Vincent H. Malmstrom found that its needle was sharply attracted whenever he held it to the navel of some of the statues, the right temple of others. Reason: these parts of their anatomy were themselves magnets. More astonishing, the rotund figures are about 4,000 years old, 2,000 years older than the first evidence of Chinese experiments with magnetism.
The Fat Boys are apparently of pre-Olmec origin, sculptured by predecessors of the earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica, who dwelt in a region around Izapa, an ancient priestly center just across the border in Mexico. The gifted artisans did not insert magnetic rocks into the figures, but apparently carved them around natural magnetic poles in the original basaltic boulders. But how did they discover this magnetism? Mesoamerica's oldest known lodestone, or primitive compass, a 2.5-cm (1-in.) bar made of magnetic rock, dates back only to 1000 B.C., a millennium younger than the Fat Boys and some 2,000 years before the Europeans first began using magnetized needles in navigation. Apparently the Fat Boy sculptors did know how to use lodestones as a means of locating other magnetic rock, to say nothing of pointing north.
Such natural pointers would explain how the Olmecs sculptured a 3,500-year-old figure of a turtle with a magnetic snout. To the Olmecs, Malmstrom speculates the magnetism may have been the magical power by which sea turtles found their way across great expanses of ocean. (He also suggests that the magnetic turtle may hint of Olmec contacts with the Chinese, since they also made their early compasses in the shape of turtles.) As for the Fat Boys, Malmstrom says, their magnetism may represent the life force, with the navel symbolizing birth, and the temple consciousness or knowledge.
Bianca:
Each day brings new wonders in Guatemala. From the markets in the highlands to the ever-present volcanoes, to the strange "Buddhas" in the town plaza in the town of La Democracia, this country continues to fascinate. The "Buddhas" are actually pre-Olmec stone sculptures about 2,500 years old. They are huge boulders minimally carved, probably because of the lack of sophisticated tools, i.e. metal, with the feet and arms wrapped around the body, which is a round blob.
Scientists call them the "Fat Boys" of Guatemala. They're magnetic, by the way. We don't know if the sculptors knew that, but they are. They're also rather endearing, with open eyes staring to the heavens. No, these roly-polies are not space aliens; people here were astronomers even 2,500 years ago. Some think the Fat Boys are star-gazing.
http://www.thebudgetbabe.com/archives/565-Fat-Boys,-Bat-Men-A-Lake-in-Paradise.html
Bianca:
Strange Attraction:
The Mystery of Magnetism
Some time about the beginning of the period which the archaeologists have called the Barra (1850-1650 B.C.), the people of coastal Soconusco appear to have developed a hierarchical society of sorts, for the construction of large, relatively elaborate houses on elevated, packed earth mounds, apparently intended for the use of chieftains, was already being carried on (Clark, 1991, 13). The rise of an elite which could command the labor and no doubt the tribute of the working masses, even before a large-scale dependence on farming had evolved, suggests that the food supply was relatively secure, that an exchangeable surplus was available -- at least for the favored few -- and that a specialization of labor was under way. Population densities were high enough to imply that village life was commonplace and that a political superstructure, based certainly on genealogy but perhaps increasingly on wealth as well, was in the process of formation. Indeed, the peoples of Barra-phase Soconusco appear to have created the first ranked societies in all of North America.
There is some question as to when the first pottery appeared in Mesoamerica. Ceramic shards found at Puerto Marquez on the west coast of Mexico near Acapulco and dated to 2400 B.C. have recently been challenged by Clark and Gosser (1994, 1). They argue that the sophisticated Barra pottery found in coastal Soconusco represents some of the oldest dependably dated ceramic ware in Mesoamerica, but that two other pottery traditions were also in evidence within the region by 1600 B.C. One of these was in the central highlands of Mexico where Purrón pottery appeared, and the third center was in northern Veracruz where the so-called Chajil pottery has been unearthed. Although it is unclear whether these Mesoamerican complexes developed spontaneously and independently or whether they were influenced by ceramic complexes that are known to have existed in northern South America from one to four millennia earlier, it seems quite apparent that they owed little or no inspiration to each other. For example, whereas Purrón pottery was relatively austere and utilitarian, Barra was elaborately decorated and functionally specialized -- the first typical of everyday housewares, the second of sophisticated luxury goods. Thus, if any conclusion can be drawn regarding the societies which produced these differing types of ceramics it must be that the Purrón, with its rather pedestrian plates, dishes, and cooking bowls, was far less affluent than the Barra, with its ornately slipped and highly burnished drinking goblets. Only with the passage of time did the two styles tend to converge, with the Purrón becoming more "fashionable" and the Barra more utilitarian (Clark and Gosser, 1994, 1-11).
Concurrent with the beginnings of their hierarchical social structure, the people of Soconusco also appear to have begun commemorating the likenesses of their chiefs in monumental sculptures. Not surprisingly, there is considerable difference of opinion among archaeologists regarding the relative age of the sculptures in question. Some contend that they date back to the Early Preclassic (ca. 2000 B.C.), while others assign them to the Late Preclassic (ca. 300 B.C.). Piña Chan, for example, saw them as "pre-Olmec" and dated them to 1200-800 B.C. (1981, 108), whereas Parsons confesses to being "slightly conservative" when assigning them a date about 500 B.C. (1989, 281). Because they can only be dated stratigraphically, it is not always easy to decide with which horizon they should be associated, especially when it is likely -- as some authorities point out -- that the sculptures themselves may have been moved and re-erected in new locations. (The reader is referred to the arguments on this matter presented by John Graham [1989] and A. Demarest [1982].) However, due to the abrupt change in geology along the present Mexico-Guatemala boundary, virtually all such sculptures are found on the Guatemalan side of the line where the local bedrock is basaltic lava, in contrast to the Mexican side where it is granite.
Thus, the very nature of the raw materials at hand was responsible for the geographic distribution of this art form, for the granite proved a more challenging and less rewarding material to work with than did the softer and more easily fashioned basalt. Consequently, large rounded boulders, often 1.5 m (5 ft) or more in diameter, were selected as the medium upon which either the rudimentary features of a head or a body were etched out in bas-relief. Only a minimal amount of carving was done, so in all cases the faces have a decidedly bloated appearance and the bodies are corpulent. Indeed, although no aspects of gender are depicted on these statues, archaeologists have called them the "Fat Boys" because of their apparent obesity.
Whether their rotundity is a reflection of the fact that the individuals being depicted were actually fat or whether it was simply a matter of laziness on the part of the sculptor in not carving away more material to make the representation more realistic, we can only speculate. What we do know is that day figurines of obese chieftains were a stock-in-trade among somewhat later artisans farther north in Soconusco (i.e., the Mexican area), so, as in many early cultures, plumpness may well have been considered a sign of beauty and/or affluence (Clark, 1991, 21).
The heads that were depicted tended to have a fairly similar, generic appearance. If they were intended to highlight any individual differences, their sculptors appear to have been singularly unsuccessful, although a few of the heads do have some strikingly unique characteristics. One of them, for example, which is now in front of the little museum at La Democracia, Guatemala, bears a strong likeness to F.D.R., lorgnette eyeglasses and all. The bodies, on the other hand, almost invariably have the arms wrapped around them so the fingers of the hands nearly come together over the fullness of their abdomens, and the legs and feet often do a similar encircling act near the base of the sculpture.
Bianca:
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:
Bianca:
West side of plaza:
(1) Body; north pole to the left of navel; south pole to the right of navel
(2) Head; north pole in the right temple; south pole below the right ear
(3) Head; no magnetic property discernible
(4) Body; no magnetic property discernible
(5) Head; no magnetic property discernible
(6) Head; north pole in lower right ear
East side of plaza:
(7) Basin or receptacle; no magnetic property discernible
(8) Body; north pole to the left of navel; south pole to the right of navel
(9) Head; strikingly Olmec characteristics; no magnetic property discernible
(10) Body; north pole on upper right side of body near waist; south pole on lower right side of body
(11) Body; north pole in back of head; south pole on back of right side of head
On the front, or east side, of museum:
(12) Head; a line of north polarity occurs along the middle of the nose, mouth, and chin; south pole at the bottom of the right ear
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page