MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A massive stone sculpture carved by Olmec artists more than 2,000 years ago that evokes ancient religious beliefs has returned to Mexico after decades in the United States in a homecoming cheered by officials and scholars.Known today as the “Earth Monster,” the sculpture was likely taken from central Mexico during the 1960s, spending time in the hands of private collectors as well as on public display before being seized by antiquities trafficking agents working with New York prosecutors.
The symbol-laden artifact weighs roughly a tonne (2,200 pounds) and was likely found several decades earlier at the Chalcatzingo archeological site in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City.U.S. officials coordinated with their Mexican counterparts to repatriate the sculpture earlier this week.It was carved from volcanic rock sometime between 800-400 BC during the heyday of the Olmec civilization, one of Mexico’s earliest complex societies with sites mostly clustered around the country’s Gulf coast.
“The mountain-cave-mouth symbolic complex acquired a high iconographic value throughout Mesoamerica from very early times, giving rise over the millennia to increasingly complex sets of images,” according to a book written by the father-son scholarly duo Alfredo Lopez Austin and Leonardo Lopez Lujan.Lopez Lujan currently leads excavations at the Aztecs’ holiest shrine in downtown Mexico City.The Olmec sculpture’s return to Mexico was hailed by Mexico Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who spoke just before it was carefully hauled onto a plane for its trip back home.”This gives us back something that explains where we come from,” Ebrard said.