Evening star., 1940-03-26

>SsSOVVN VI SSsSuSS IVY
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
BY Thomas r. Henry.
DR.. tyathew w. Stirling, chief Of the
Bureau Of American Ethnology, is. .
rabid football fan.
Wandering about in Mexico a few
years aga he thought he was seeing
things when he came upon an enormous
stone football helmet sticking out of
the soil in the Tehuantepec Peninsula.
He returned the next year to dig It
out. It turned out to be a helmet on
an enormous human head carved from
basalt, weighing approximately 20 tons.
Browsing through the reports of pre-
vious explorers he found that one similar
helmet had been reported many years
ago on high, sandy island surrounded
by swamps near the little village Of La
Venta about 20 miles from the Gulf Of
Mexico. This year he obtained a grant
from the National Geographic Society
to explore this site.
AS result, the society announced
this week. DR.. Stirling has at last found
his super football team. He has un-
covered five colossal heads each weigh
ing 20 tons or more, all buried under a
few feet of soil and In an area a quarter
of mile square. 1t is as If they were in
a "huddle." Five players are absent,
possibly in another huddle nearby which
DR.. Stirling has not yet found.
The five heads vary in height from
feet to 8 feet and 5 inches and in
circumference from 13 feet and inches
to 81 feet and inches. It is estimated
that the weight Of the largest may ex-
ceed rs tons
The huge heads have no necks. The
base of each lies just below the chin
and rests on a foundation of broken
stones. One head is shaped In the
form Of an altar. The features on the
other four heads are boldly sculptured
with broad noses, thick lips and promi-
nent eyes. The ears are mere tracings.
The faces have strongly Negroid fea-
lures
If the rest Of the body of such foot
ball player could be imagined in pro-
portion to the head, 1t would weigh
somewhere in the neighborhood OF 500
tons-Dr. Strings ideal for real world
champions.
But even this team Of stone titans
was thrown for loss, DR.. Stirling re-
ports. They are buried in dense jungle
and have proved no match through the
centuries for the endless flood Of vines
and bushes creeping over them.
All are of the peculiar type of rock
known as basalt. DR.. Stirling has been
unable to locate any basalt deposits
nearer than 100 miles away. Thus the
feat of erecting these statues must have
been a work comparable, on a smaller
scale. to the building Of the pyramids.
There was no animal transportation
known IN America before the coming
of the Spaniards. Each head is carved
from a single block. Blocks weighing
from Is to 80 tons must have been
dragged through the wilderness by men
alone. 1t is very doubtful If anything
similar to a wheel was known.
The purpose of the statues is un-
known and the resemblance to modern
football players must have been purely
incidental. The area, DR.. Stirling be-
ieves. was some sort Of religious shrine.
One of the heads, in fact, is carved to
serve as an altar and conceivably may
have been used for human sacrifices.
The helmeted heads probably were in
tended to represent ancient-and prob
ably very ugly and cruel-gods.
The territory where they were found
is barely within the range of the greatest
civilization of the primitive New World
that of the Mayas who built great
temples and cities in what are now the
dense jungles of Yucatan and Guate-
mala. If these statues have any Maya
connection, however, they must be very
early and primitive. Nothing even sug-
gestive of the same thing ever has
been found on any known Maya site.
The statues seem equally remote from
anything connected with the religious
life of the Aztec peoples who occupied
a good deal of Mexico at the time Of
Cortez- although their ugliness might
fit some aspects of the Aztec religion
with its human sacrifices.
Neither the Mayas nor the Aztecs had
any game resembling modern football.
The nearest approach was game not.
vastly different from basket ball,
rough game in which, so far as is known,
the players were not protected with he'll
NETS.
DR.. Stirling has been frankly puzzled
by the Negroid appearance of the faces.
The first black men came to the New
World with Columbus. The physiognomy
of the Indians of the region was not
distinguished by thick lips or fiat noses.
Only in certain sections of South Amer
lea would Indian faces have been found
approaching this type.
The geological evidence yields no clue
as to the time when the titans went
into their huddle.