Stela C bears a 32 BC date; the video argues for Olmec priority

February 13, 2026MexicoGeneralShare

▶

Key facts

• Matthew Stirling’s team found the lower half of Stela C at Tres Zapotes in 1939. The archaeologist was Marion Stirling, his wife and collaborator—not Marian Sterling.
• Stela C records the bar-and-dot Long Count date 7.16.3.2.13, conventionally correlated to September 3, 32 BC.
• A local farmer found the upper fragment in 1969, and archaeologist Alfonso Zenil subsequently acquired and reunited it with the lower half. The cited results do not substantiate the claim that Marion Stirling had predicted the exact date beforehand.
• Stela C demonstrates Long Count notation at an Olmec-region site roughly three centuries before the earliest known Maya Long Count inscriptions. It does not by itself prove Olmec priority in writing, numerology and astronomy or over every Mesoamerican civilization.
• The standard chronology places the Olmec horizon around 1500–400 BC. The cited results do not support the claims that Maya archaeologists viciously attacked Stirling or that other scholars dated the Olmec to AD 400 or after AD 1000.
• The claim that the Olmecs were Mesoamerica’s “mother culture” is the video’s interpretation, not an established conclusion.

← All stories

AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.