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

Due to Soconusco's location almost in line with the historic movement of the north magnetic pole, compasses used in the region would have continued to experience a magnetic declination of virtually the same magnitude throughout the last 500-600 years, unlike those used at such a place as London, England. Whether the movement of the pole during prehistoric times followed a similar path is unknown.

In this connection, however, it is interesting to note that the known shift of the north magnetic pole has been from just north of the Russian islands of Novaya Zemlya sometime about the year 1000 to between Spitsbergen and Greenland about 1500 and into the Queen Elizabeth Islands of the Canadian Arctic by about 1900. While this shift represented a major change in declination for residents of the Old World -- from about 15-20º east of north to the same relative distance west of north over roughly a thousand years -- had this movement been viewed from the longitude of Soconusco (i.e., 90º W), it would have been hardly noticeable. In other words, a compass needle would have pointed almost due north throughout that entire time.

Finally, it should be noted that in Michael Coe's excavations at San Lorenzo in the late 1960's, a piece of magnetite measuring about 2.5 cm. (1 in.) in length and a little less than a 0.5 cm (0.25 in.) in cross-section was uncovered, prompting him to envision it as a part of a compass. Testing its direction-finding properties by floating it on a cork mat, Coe noted that it consistently oriented itself to the same point slightly west of magnetic north.

More-exhaustive tests (involving the suspension of the magnetite bar on a thread) were later carried out by John Carlson, who reported that the object's orientational ability did not come closer than about 35º to the north magnetic pole (Carlson, 1975, 753). Thus, it could conceivably have been used as a direction-finder, but with scarcely more "preference" for north than for either east or west.