Here, then, was the first mystery of the Olmecs: a monumental piece of sculpture, more than 2000 years old, which portrayed a subject with unmistakable negroid features. There were, of course, no African blacks in the New World 2000 years ago, nor did any arrive until the slave trade began, well after the conquest. There is, however, firm palaeoanthropological evidence that one of the many different migrations into the Americas during the last Ice Age did consist of peoples of negroid stock. This migration occurred around 15,000 BC.
