Olmecs, not African, but Oriental? or were-jaguars?

Continuing with the Olmecs, I noticed, while researching for my post about the supposed African admixture into the Olmeca people in Pre-Hispanic America, that not all sculptures and statues depicted people with African features.

I was quite surprised to see that many Olmec artifacts depicted people with a very clear East Asian appearance. In this post we will explore their artwork with non-African features, and what some scholars have written about these oriental-looking depictions.

See my two previous posts on the Olmecs: Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?

Jaguar Men: the were-jaguar

Those who have studied the Olmec culture find that their artwork depicts people with feline features, and this has led to the concept of a jaguar-based symbolism used by the ruling class and the religious leaders and shamans. Of course, we cannot decipher their writing, and there are no Olmecs to tell us about their beliefs. These theories are just that, conjectures.

As an example of this notion, I will quote from the following essay: Slater, F., (2010). Were-jaguars and jaguar babies in Olmec religion, Essex Student Journal 3(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.5526/esj114.

"Digs at sites such as La Venta have yielded an abundance of finds, testament to the sophistication and artistic sensitivity of this ancient culture. Of these finds, one particular type has spurred the most debate and speculation. The delicately carved and gracefully composed anthropomorphic hybrid figures, known as Were-Jaguars and Jaguar-Babies respectively, have puzzled scholars for decades....
The Jaguar Motif appears in a variety of different guises. The essential elements of the Were-Jaguar or Jaguar-Baby are, the ‘V’ shaped cleft, clawed or paw like feet or hands and a feline head with, in some cases, a tail. With Jaguar-Babies the iconography is of a greater symbolic content and is based on facial features. These include; The ‘V’ shaped cleft, large almond shaped eyes, a snarling mouth with bifurcated fangs and full down-turned lips and a broad flat nose. Different levels of ‘jaguarness’ are visible in these images, with some being unmistakeably jaguar like. Others have a much more subtle pars pro toto style, which is typical of Olmec iconography...
Whilst we can never know for certain the significance of the jaguar to Olmec religious view we can be certain of their importance. Whilst it is always difficult to assert with any confidence about the mystical practices of cultures long dead, the frequency of this motif is an excellent starting point for investigation, leading no doubt to the wealth of literature dealing with the subject. In my opinion, the Jaguar was an important symbol of the power of the natural world, as the apex predator of the surrounding area it would be natural for the jaguar to be subsumed into the iconography of any burgeoning chiefdom, which might later become the “royal house” (if such a term can be used accurately). However, the jaguar would always first and foremost be the creature that most played on the popular imagination and, before any conflation with the trappings of state, would indubitably have become a major part of the religious complex. As for the possibility of human/jaguar copulation, it is extremely difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions as to the significance of the jaguar motif, especially when it comes to the possibility of sexual intercourse. Those Monuments where copulation can be inferred - transmit just that - an inference."

Were-Jaguar Olmec figurine, 900-300 BC. Source

Down Syndrome

An article by John M. Starbuck, (2011) (On the Antiquity of Trisomy 21: Moving Towards a Quantitative Diagnosis of Down Syndrome in Historic Material Culture. the Journal of Contemporary Anthropology Research, Vol. II-1) put forward the idea that these statues depict people with Down Syndrome who were worshiped because they resembled their idea of a person which blende human and jaguar features:

"Milton and Gonzalo (1974) argue that several Olmec figurines from Meso-America dated from 1500 B.C. – 300 A.D. may depict Down syndrome. Milton and Gonzalo report that these figurines have upslanted palpebral fissures, well-marked epicanthic folds, short noses, broad nasal bridges, brachycephalic head shapes, open mouth postures, and a lower lip that is drawn downward. Kunze and Nippert (1986) have also diagnosed an Olmec figurine with Down syndrome because of the presence of slanted palpebral fissures, ocular hypotelorism, short extremities, and obesity. In addition to asserting that these figurines depict Down syndrome, Milton and Gonzalo (1974) argue that the religious beliefs of the Olmec culture may have ascribed a high status to individuals with trisomy 21 because they were thought to be the offspring of a mating between humans and the jaguar, which was the most powerful Olmec totem."

Below is an image depicting a were-jaguar, it has clear feline features, with jaguar ears, and sharp teeth in a snarling mouth. It does not look oriental, it is a man-jaguar:

Down Syndrome? Olmec figurines. Starbuck J.

Olmec figurines depicting adults

The following artworks have a very strong oriental look to them. They are not babies, but men:

Olmec Jadeite face, 900-400 BC. The Met

Olmec contortionist, Middle pre-Classical period, 900-400 BCE. Acrobat made of steatite. Source

Some believe the "Wrestler" shown below, with his mustache and goatee is a fake, a forgery that was created to resemble Olmec art. Others say it is authentic. It is remarkable as it hints at motion, and has unique features that don't look like an Amerindian at all!

The Wrestler, basalt, Olmec statue. 1,400-400 BC. Source

Lord of Las Limas, Olmec, Veracruz, 1,200-400 BC. Serpentine with pyrite eyes.

Comments

The Olmecs are better known for their gigantic Afro-looking heads, like the one shown below. The delicate and finely crafted figures with oriental features when compared with these massive and coarsely hewen heads look as if they were the creation of different societies and civilizations. This is quite intriguing. One one hand, small detailed objects, on the other 40 ton, 3 meter tall (10 ft.) colossal heads. Were they produced at different times, during different cultural periods?

Notice how the gigantic head, despite its lips, and flat nose bridge has oriental eyes!

This goes to show that a culture can display many different styles of art, even if they use the same media (stone) and that the creative inspiration in humans is vast. We'd never infer that the Olmecs were were-jaguars just because they made these statues, so why do we wonder if they were Africans that sailed to America, if we see statues with African features?

I do believe that people depict their beliefs and also portray themselves. The oriental-looking figures are not gods, or were-jaguars, they are people, people with pronounced Asian-like epicanthic folds, the skin that covers the inner corner of the eye (canthus). Interestingly, they have high nose bridges, which is not so common among East Asians. So it isn't likely that they depicted visitors from China, Japan, or Korea that sailed across the Pacific Ocean 3500 years ago. They could easily represent a Native American, who share both features. And so do the Polynesians!).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

EDAR in ancient Amerindians and modern ones - 2025 update

The ectodysplasin A receptor (EDAR) gene, which is also known as rs3827760; 370V/A (where the V and the A represent Valine and Alanine, two aminoacids) or 1540T/C (where T and C are two nucleotides Thymine and Cytosine respectively) has an impact on tooth shape, hair thickness, sweat glands, and milk production and breasts in women. It is also found almost exclusively in Asian and Native American populaitons. It is extremely rare in Africa and Europe who carry the "ancestral" variant the 370V. The derived or mutated allele, where the Alanine was replaced for Valine in the protein or Thymine for Cytosine in the DNA strand, is a "recent" mutation known as 370A.

I have posted about it, when I mentioned that an ancient Amerindian from Brazil, a the Lapa do Santo individual who died over 6,000 years ago, carried the ancestral variant. Which is odd, since his ancestors came from Asia, and the derived variant is predominant there. This variant is also predominant among current Native Americans.

The question is: How could he have the original ancestral unmutated version while the other natives have the derived version? What about the bottle necks and founder effects, the Beringian standstill and so forth? These "filters" are supposed to have narrowed down the genetic variability in America, only a few mtDNA and Y-Chromosome haplogroups managed to enter America. So, with these limiations, wouldn't we expect all ancient Native Americans to carry the mutated Asian variant with them into America?

Posth et al. (2018) were the first to point out this anomaly:

"EDAR gene Variant. Our data show that a variant in EDAR that affects tooth shape, hair follicles and thickness, sweat, and mammary gland ductal branching and that occurs at nearly 100% frequency in present day Native Americans and East Asians was not fixed in USR1, Anzick-1, a Brazil Lapa do Santo 9600 BP individual and a Brazil Laranjal 6700 BP individual, all of whom carry the ancestral allele. Thus, the derived allele rose in frequency in parallel in both East Asians and in Native Americans."

These ancient American remains mentioned by Posth are old: the USR1 baby was 11,500 years old, Anzic-1 ~12,900 years old, the Brazilian dates are given above.

Yet the derived (mutated) form was present in the ancient site of Los Rieles "(12.0 kya) from coastal Chile of South America." (source), and the same source states that the mutated form increased to a frequency of 90% by the Early Holocene in both East Asia and America (11.6 - 5.0 kya). Posth et al. give the Los Rieles site a younger age of 10.9 kya, and confirms it had a mutated variant (See the Table 7 in Posth's Supplementary Material with a site by site detail).

Posth explains this anomaly by suggesting that the derived EDAR was not yet fixed at that time and that it evolved later, in some kind of convergent evolution on both sides of the Pacific. Probably promoted by natural selection.

A newer paper by Xiaowei Mao et al., (2021) from which the following image was taken, discusses ancient remains from the Amur River region, it also mentions EDAR.

Fig 4B. EDAR alleles. Source

The image above is captioned "(B) Allele counts for adaptive mutations of EDAR V370A in Tianyuan, ancient populations in the Amur region, and recently published ancient northern East Asians (Yumin, Bianbian, Boshan, Xiaogao, and Xiaojingshan) (Yang et al., 2020) from 40–6 ka. Purple shading represents the period of the LGM. Dots represent genotype calls (blue, ancestral alleles; red, derived alleles; gray, missing alleles). The number at the top of the bar (separated by a comma) shows the allele coverage for the derived and ancestral allele, and the number in parentheses at the bottom of the bar shows the number of individuals included in that time column. Genotypes were called using a maximum-likelihood-based method (snpAD) that takes into account possible errors in the covered alleles."

The text adds that "here we show that mutation V370A in the EDAR gene appeared in all ancient East Asians (including AR19K), except for AR33K and Tianyuan, the only two individuals in our sample predating the LGM stadial in East Asia." So it was not present in the 34.3-32.4 cal BP AR33K specimen from the Amur River area or the older Tianyuan man (40 ky old). It developed later. Remember that it was not found in ancient Amerindians either.

The paper adds that "our direct observation demonstrated that this allele emerged as early as ∼19 ka, as observed in the AR19K individual (Figure 4B), providing an older and more accurate upper boundary for the allelic age estimate." Then it spreads quickly reaching 93.7% in Asia nowadays.

Prevous estimates from 2008 (online source) reported a later date of fixation of 370A, some 10,740 years ago, it also suggested that "370A was likely at high frequency before the colonization of the Americas 10,500–14,000 years ago. Thus, the high frequency of 370A in Native Americans is most likely due to positive selection prior to migrations from Asia to America."

These explanations suggest that the derived allele was already present in the people who populated America.

But why is it not found in the other old remains? Some would argue that the first people to reach America carried the ancestral and the derived variants, and that eventually the later replaced the former. I believe that these people came from a group that carried the Ancestral allele, so this places them before the LGM, say 30 or 40 kya. Then came the post LGM migration with the mutated allele and erased all of the previous original Americans.

Another explanation lies with the Australasians: A 2021 paper on the genetics ancient Asians reported that none of the 7 ancient Jomon samples (Jomon hunter-gatherers lived in Japan) dated to ~2500–800 BC carried the derived allele. The Jomon were assimilated by the a later wave of people who now make up the Japanese population. The Ainu of Northern Japan are realated to the Jomon, and these, in turn, seem to have reached Japan using a coastal route, linking them to Southeast Asian people like tue Taiwan aborigines (Ami, and Atayal) and the Igorot, all of which are Austronesian minorities. (source). This coastal migration from ASEAN to Japan could also link them with the Onge, who only carry the ancestral allele.

Could Onge-related people have carried the ancestral allele into America in a first peopling wave, and in the process leave their genetic imprint there?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Genetics of white skin - The White Indians

Another post about white-skinned native people in America.

Today's post will look into what causes light-colored skin, and address the question of why people can have white skin without having European ancestry (like the Chachapoyas in Peru).

The color of the skin depends on the amount of melanin, a pigment that causes the skin to darken. Melanin plays an important role in protecting the skin from damage caused by ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun, which can cause burns, and over the years, skin cancer.

Since humans seem to have evolved in the tropical and subtropical zones of Africa, which have high levels of solar radiation, the basal color of human skin was dark as more melanin was necessary to protect the skin in equatorial regions.

But, as our ancestors moved out of Africa and reached temperate and cold areas, which due to their latitude receive lower levels of solar radiation, the dark skin became a problem. Sunlight is necessary to help the body convert a provitamin called 7-dehydrocholesterol, into previtamin D3. This process requires ultraviolet radiaton, and takes place in the skin.

Low levels of vitamin D3 can cause health problems such as ricketts in children, poor calcium absorption (leading to fragile bones), lower immunity, and impaired muscle development. Those who lived in regions with little sunlight and had pale skin produced more vitamin D3 than their dark-skinned counterparts, and had a selective advantage. They survived, mated, and passed this trait to their offspring.

>> Read our Vitamin D fact sheet

So, people who live in Northern Europe inherited a genetic trait that favors sunlight absorption and vitamin D3 production in the overcast, long-winters, short-summers, region they live in which also receives sunlight with a low incidence angle (that weakens it). Their skin is pale.

Now we know that it is due to a mutation unique to European people in the genes SLC24A5, TYR, OCA2, and SLC45A2.

The people living in northern Asia also have pale skin, for the same reasons, but they developed it through a different mutation. This is known as convergent evolution. The same outcome through different genes and adaptations (think about dolphins, and sharks or bats, birds and pterosaurs).

The East Asian gene is still unknown, but rs885479 a site inside the OCA2 gene is thought to play a role in their white skin. But there may be other genes involved. In fact, a paper suggests that this is the case, white skin among Asians may be polygenic, this means that several genes work together to produce this effect.

Below we cite a paper reporting the whitening effects of another gene, the MFSD12 gene in East Asians and Amerindians.

The people who left Africa and lived in areas with high levels of solar radiation (New Guinea, Australia, Tropical India, and also in the Amazon region of South America, all retained the dark-skinned genes, due to selection, as it protects them from sunburns and cancer.

Native Americans

Since Amerindians are said to have originated in Eastern Asia and Siberia, they too should carry the Asian variant in low levels (due to bottle necks and founder effects).

But, as mentioned previously, European discovery and conquest brought diseases that exterminated nearly 90% of the Native Americans, then they introduced millions of African slaves and all groups intermingled causing a genetic mixture that impacted on skin color of the modern populations.

A study conducted in 2023 (by Ang et al.) analyzed the genetics of a group of people known as Kalinago in the Island of Dominica in the Caribbean. These people have a high level of African and Native American ancestry (~87%) so the white skin effect added by their European background is minimized, this helps eliminate it as a confounding factor. It found that European ancestry with the SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 genes reduced skin darkness by only 5 and 4 melanin units while "Native American ancestry had the highest effect on pigmentation and reduced it by more than 20 melanin units." The authors checked the genetics but were not able to identify the genes involved in causing this light-skinned effect (hypopigmentation) in the Amerindians.

The authors used a Melanin Index to classify skin color by measuring the amount of light reflected by the skin on the inside of the upper part of the arm of the subjects. The average value ranged between 20.7 and 79.7 units.

The authors conclude that "Additional Native American hypopigmenting alleles of significant effect size remain to be identified. Previously characterized variants do not explain this difference. It is possible that multiple hypopigmenting variants of small effect sizes are together required to reach Native American and/or East Asian levels of hypopigmentation, individually having insufficient effect to detect in the Kalinago, given our power limitations."

In plain English: they could't identify any genes among the Native ancestry that could account for the skin whitening effect. So, if it is a gene that has a big effect, it hasn't been found, or, if it is the cummulative small effects of many genes, the individual impact is too small to be detected by their methods.

The "previously characterized variants" mentioned above may refer to an earlier paper from 2019 by Adhikari et al., that analyzed sampled of 6,357 Latinamericans and identified a gene linked to lighter-colored skin tone, MFSD12. It is also found in East Asians. The authors suggest that positive selection for this variant began some 10,834 year ago (CI: 5,266–33,801 years ago). Below is the average frequencies of this variant in Asian and Amerindian people, in Africa and West Eurasia it is zero.

The mutation is the SNP rs2240751 on the "the third exon of the major facilitator superfamily domain containing 12 (MFSD12) gene".

Worldwide allele frequencies of rs2240751 (MFSD12). See Fig. 11 in paper Suppl. Info.

The frequency is high in America roughly 30% on average and peaks at 55% among the Quechua. In East Asia it is lower,~18% on average and 37% among Japanese.

Perhaps it was higher among some natives in America leading to whiter skin (like those reported by the Spanish chroniclers in the 1500s as we will see in tomorrow's post).

Dark Skin variants

The 2019 paper also reports a skin-darkening variant: "The derived allele for the index SNP (rs11198112) is associated with darker skin pigmentation, in contrast to the effect of the majority of variants associated with skin pigmentation... The derived allele is segregating at low to moderate frequency across many populations, but reaches its highest frequency (>50%) in Native Amazonians and Melanesians."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

A trait shared by East Asians and Denisovans: three rooted molar

As you can see, by checking my most recent posts, I have been reading recent articles and papers about Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Another one caught my eye: Rare dental trait provides morphological evidence of archaic introgression in Asian fossil record, Shara E. Bailey, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Susan C. Antón, PNAS first published July 8, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907557116.

Bailey, Hublin and Antón found a dental trait in modern humans that is quite rare outside of Eastern Asia and the Americas and yet was found in the jawbones of two Denisovans. This suggests that modern Asians inherited this trait from an ancestral population that lived in Asia.

Let me quote the paper's Abstract to summarize its findings:

"The recently described Denisovan hemimandible from Xiahe, China [F. Chen et al., (2019) Nature 569, 409–412], possesses an unusual dental feature: a 3-rooted lower second molar. A survey of the clinical and bioarchaeological literature demonstrates that the 3-rooted lower molar is rare (less than 3.5% occurrence) in non-Asian Homo sapiens. In contrast, its presence in Asian-derived populations can exceed 40% in China and the New World. It has long been thought that the prevalence of 3-rooted lower molars in Asia is a relatively late acquisition occurring well after the origin and dispersal of H. sapiens. However, the presence of a 3-rooted lower second molar in this 160,000-y-old fossil hominin suggests greater antiquity for the trait. Importantly, it also provides morphological evidence of a strong link between archaic and recent Asian H. sapiens populations. This link provides compelling evidence that modern Asian lineages acquired the 3-rooted lower molar via introgression from Denisovans."

So the three-rooted second molar (3RM2) is unusal outside of Asia and it was found in the Xiahe Denisovan fossil which is 160,000 years old.

The paper also tells us that: "he recently described Penghu 1 mandible from Taiwan (190 to 10 ka) also exhibits a 3RM2 ... The Penghu mandible retains 'archaic' features, including a receding symphysis that lacks a chin, a thick mandibular corpus, and large molar crowns similar in size to Denisovans. Like Xiahe, these exceptionally large molars are coupled with agenesis of the third molar. For these reasons, Chen et al.suggest that Penghu 1 may also be closely related to Denisovans. Both mandibles show that the 3RM anomaly existed in archaic Asian hominins before H. sapiens in the region.".

The authors conclude: " the presence of “archaic features” in recent Asians that were once used to suggest continuity from Pleistocene Asian H. erectus may also have been obtained by introgression from Denisovans."

Some interesting facts they report are that " the 3RM has not been reported in the earliest H. sapiens from Asia, nor have we observed the trait in early H. sapiens from Africa or Homo erectus in Asia.* We note, however, that the lack of radiography of many specimens and the absence of the original Zhoukoudian remains make this conclusion preliminary."

The global prevalecy of the 3RM is highest in Asians (this paper cites a 25% prevalence rate for Nepal) and Esquimos. See the table in this other paper for more info on 3RM prevalence data.

The Homo luzonensis, which lived 67 kya in the Philippines (see post), had teeth that shared features of both modern H. sapiens and ancient H. erectus, yet they were far smaller than those of modern humans and... they also had three rooted molars.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Deeply Admixed East Asians and Neanderthals

A pair of papers behind paywalls deal with the issue of Neanderthal and Human admixture. I will share both abstracts:

1Complex History of Admixture between Modern Humans and Neandertals, Benjamin Vernot and Joshua M. Akey DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.01.006:

Recent analyses have found that a substantial amount of the Neandertal genome persists in the genomes of contemporary non-African individuals. East Asians have, on average, higher levels of Neandertal ancestry than do Europeans, which might be due to differences in the efficiency of purifying selection, an additional pulse of introgression into East Asians, or other unexplored scenarios. To better define the scope of plausible models of archaic admixture between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans, we analyzed patterns of introgressed sequence in whole-genome data of 379 Europeans and 286 East Asians. We found that inferences of demographic history restricted to neutrally evolving genomic regions allowed a simple one-pulse model to be robustly rejected, suggesting that differences in selection cannot explain the differences in Neandertal ancestry. We show that two additional demographic models, involving either a second pulse of Neandertal gene flow into the ancestors of East Asians or a dilution of Neandertal lineages in Europeans by admixture with an unknown ancestral population, are consistent with the data. Thus, the history of admixture between modern humans and Neandertals is most likely more complex than previously thought.

In other words Europeans and East Asians carry Neanderthal genes but this cannot be explained by a reduction of Neanderthal genes in Europeans due to the forces of Natural selection. Instead it may be due to either of the following: (i) a second admixture with East Asians and ⁄ or (ii) European admixture with another "ancient" population which watered down the Neanderthal component.

Either option is interesting, there have been hints at an archaic admixture event with a yet to be defined ancestral group (H. erectus? Denisovans?). Additionally Neanderthal presence is strong among East Asians and, may I point out: Amerindians. And this is surely due to a "deeper" admixtwure event.

2.Benjamin Vernot, Joshua M. Akey, Complex History of Admixture between Modern Humans and Neandertals The American Journal of Human Genetics, Available online 12 February 2015.

It has been hypothesized that the greater proportion of Neandertal ancestry in East Asians than in Europeans is due to the fact that purifying selection is less effective at removing weakly deleterious Neandertal alleles from East Asian populations. Using simulations of a broad range of models of selection and demography, we have shown that this hypothesis cannot account for the higher proportion of Neandertal ancestry in East Asians than in Europeans. Instead, more complex demographic scenarios, most likely involving multiple pulses of Neandertal admixture, are required to explain the data.

More evidence to the multiple admixture event in East Asia.

These papers make me wonder about the geographic range of Neanderthals.They have been found in Altai, but surely they expanded well East, into East Asia, Beringia and, why not? America.

Did they admix in the New World and back migrations returned their DNA to East Asia? Are the current time frames correct? When did these multiple admixtures take place? Are we to believe that they took place in the 60 -30 ky window between the purported Out of Africa event and the demise of the Neanderthals?

Additional studies will surely settle these issues.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall ©