Did the Zoque (Olmecs) migrate to Mexico from the Southeastern United States?
The Maya’s recorded on their stone stelae that the ancestors of the Zoque arrived in three great flotillas of canoes onto the coast of Vera Cruz, Mexico around the year 1600 BC. This is about the same time that Poverty Point, LA was settled, (See article on Poverty Point.) Up to this point in time, pottery was not made in Mexico. The Zoque apparently introduced the technology for making pottery. Indigenous peoples in what is now Georgia and Florida had been making pottery since about 2500 BC. The architecture of Tick Island, FL and Watson Brake, LA predate any structures in Mexico or South America. Did the first steps beyond being migratory hunters begin along the Gulf Coast of the United States, and then spread southward to Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. It is a tantalizing possibility.
