Andrew Schulz

So it's like an aesthetic figure of a jaguar slicing this Olmec king's face open or the top of his head or the emblem that's in the top of his helmet open.

And what I think it was is there were periods where the were jaguar priestly class would probably overcome and assassinate and kill the king's

bury their heads under the ground, cut it up as a statement to everybody that the werejaguar is predominant.

And then there's these warring classes back and forth with each other.

How long ago would this be?

This is over 3,000 years ago.

And this is America's first civilization.

The Olmecs.

Yeah.

And so the Olmecs rise and fall in... Before...

before anything else is really going on.

So they rise and they fall.

And then about the time they fall is when the Maya start taking off and then the Zapotec start taking off.

Um, so, um, Oh yeah.

So that's, uh, that's Matthew Sterling next to, uh,

next to the main head at La Venta.

You see all those markings on the top of his head?

So my thought is they would push that head down into the ground and carve up the top of it and maybe leave it exposed as a statement that the were-jaguars had taken over.

But later on in Olmec civilization, like their last capital city of Tres Potes, the were-jaguars gone.

So the Olmec heads, the kingdom or whatever it is, the non-were-jaguar class wins out.