Andrew Schulz

The reason that we call the Minoans the Minoans, I'll tell you the origins of both their names, is because we name them after maybe at least what a Greek...

Greek mythology tells us about the ancient lost kings of Crete, or one of them, his name was Minos, which may have just been the title of what it meant to be a king on Crete.

So when Sir Arthur Evans finds the city, finds the palace of Knossos, he just calls them, rather than after Minos, he calls them the Minoans.

The Olmecs are people who live right here, but when the Spaniards were going through Mexico 3,000 years after the Olmecs were around, they're probably what, the Olmecs are so old that the Aztecs probably never even knew the Olmecs had existed.

But the Spaniards are asking, they're learning everything about Mexico, and the Aztecs tell them that the people who live in this land that farm rubber are the rubber people, but that translates in Nahuatl to Olmecas.

So they just name the ancient people after the name of the modern people.

But the Olmecs had risen and fallen before the Maya had really, really gotten started.

And so we don't know the name of the Olmecs.

We don't know what language they spoke.

We don't know what they call themselves.

We don't know their history.

All we can do is look at the artifact record and try to put puzzle pieces together.

Fuck.

no less complicated, dramatic, nuanced, or intelligent than any of the other ancient civilizations that we've known about.

When you imagine all those conversations that Greek and Roman politicians must have been having with each other when both their lives

lives are on the line politically, same thing's happening in the Olmec world.

It's just we don't have a record of it.

But must have been, you know, these aren't primitive people to be able to erect.

So those megalithic heads come from 100 kilometers as the bird flies.

Or as the crow flies away.