Stela C's missing half yields 32 BC date; 1946 San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán Museum dig finds 200+ monuments

October 21, 2026MexicoGeneralShare

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Key facts

• Marian Sterling analysed the surviving half of a broken stela found at Tres Zapotes, using Mesoamerican bar-and-dot numerals, and calculated that the stela was erected in 32 BC.
• Sylvanus Morley and J. Eric Thompson opposed the Sterlings' early antiquity for the Olmec, placing the culture at around 400 AD or later, and Marian Sterling's dating was attacked as methodologically careless.
• Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Zenil later recovered the missing half of the stela at Tres Zapotes; the combined date converts to precisely September 3, 32 BC.
• At San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán Museum in 1946 Matthew Sterling's party found the 30-ton head known as El Rey, and by the end of the expedition had uncovered more than 200 basalt monuments and statues, including Colossal Heads 1 through 10 and monuments 1 through 61.
• Surface finds at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán Museum showed early pottery styles preceding those of La Venta, which the video uses to argue San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán Museum was the formative centre of Olmec society.
• Sterling's later expeditions from 1947 to 1957 in Panama, Costa Rica and Ecuador recorded were-jaguar depictions, gold, pottery and stone tools, and Olmec-style man-made mounds, leading the video to say little serious research on the were-jaguar has been done since.

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