The Crowned Dragon of China and New Archaeological Finds in the Americas

By Robert M. Schoch
Boston University


The discovery of a new species of dinosaur was reported earlier this year (February 2006) from 160 million-year-old fossil beds of northwest China. The scientific name, Guanlong wucaii, meaning in Chinese “Crowned Dragon,” is apt since this relatively small bipedal dinosaur (it stood about three and a half feet tall, and had an overall length of about ten feet) carried on its head a large complex crest, perhaps brightly colored when the animal was alive, which may have been used in behavioral displays to either attract, or perhaps threaten, other members of its species. The Crowned Dragon was probably covered in simple feathers, as is known to have been the case for other members of its taxonomic group, not for flight but as protection and insulation. As a side note, the close connection between certain dinosaurs and birds is now generally recognized, and indeed if you eat a chicken or turkey, you are effectively eating a little dinosaur-form of animal.

But what makes the Crowned Dragon so exciting to some paleontologists, and members of the general public, is that it is apparently a primitive form of tyrannosaur, that group made famous in the popular eye by the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex who roamed western North America about 70 million years ago. Although hailed by some reporters as the ancestor of T. rex, the Crowned Dragon was much more likely a member of a primitive side branch of tyrannosaurs, sort of a distant cousin tens of millions of generations removed. Still, the Crowned Dragon is certainly related to North American T. rex, but it is found in China. What is going on? Back then the continents and oceans were in different positions, global climatic patterns were not the same as today, and dinosaurs were free to roam from one region of the world to another, regions that are now separated by oceans or mountain ranges.

Jump forward to modern times - - well, modern times from a geological perspective. The continents and oceans are positioned as we know them, and many a mainstream archaeologist has suggested, or simply assumed, that there was no connection between the classical Old World and the civilizations of the New World for the very simple reason that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans posed impenetrable barriers to contact and cross fertilization until Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492. Over the years a number of scholars have questioned this dogma, including yours truly (in my book Voyages of the Pyramid Builders), yet old and entrenched ideas die slowly. But why am I bringing this topic up? I cannot help think about it as I review a few new archaeological discoveries from the Americas that have just been made public (May 2006).

A thirty-ton monolith (twenty-five feet wide, thirteen feet high, and sixteen inches thick), dated to circa 900 B.C., with enigmatic carvings on it, has been reported from the newly opened archaeological site of Tamtoc, about 550 miles northeast of Mexico City. So far the “Mexican Monolith” has been interpreted as possibly a lunar calendar, but it also contains symbols that have apparently never been seen in the Americas before. Some experts are suggesting that perhaps it is an Olmec carving, or at least related to the Olmecs. The Olmecs formed an early civilization that originated around 1100 B.C. further south in what are now the areas of Veracruz and Tabasco. But where did the Olmec people come from? This has long been a mystery. One distinct possibility, which I discuss in Voyages, is that the Olmec civilization arose at least in part due to an influx of ancient Shang Chinese who crossed the Pacific during the twelfth millennium B.C. Shang pictographs have been identified on Olmec artifacts, most notably by the researcher Michael Xu (Central Oklahoma University), and there is a distinct Chinese tradition of a large group of Shang heading east into the Pacific, never to return to China. Furthermore, the Olmec were pyramid builders, and so were the ancient Chinese, and I believe there are distinct similarities evident between the ancient Chinese pyramids (including some found in the region of Mongolia) and those of the Olmecs. We might also point out that, among Olmec carvings, often on a gigantic scale, are faces that many people view as strikingly African; perhaps the Olmec culture was the original melting pot of races and peoples in America. So where do I suggest that scholars might look as they work to understand the carvings of the newly discovered Mexican Monolith? Ancient China!

There have been other exciting finds reported from South America in recent weeks. From northern Brazil (in the state of Amapa) stories of an “Amazon Stonehenge” have made the news. Reported to consist of 127 granite monoliths, each about ten feet high, arranged in circles in an open field, the structure may date anywhere from about 500 years ago to 2,000 years old. Preliminary work on the site suggests that the stones were used for astronomical observations, indicating a sophisticated interest in the skies, and blocks aligned relative to the winter solstice have been identified.

Also aligned with the solstices is a temple and observatory complex newly discovered in the Peruvian Andes, in the Rio Chillon Valley north of Lima. The observatory itself sits atop a thirty-three-foot high pyramid. On the site are large clay sculptures of animals and a disk bearing a face, along with incised drawings and paintings. Hailed as the oldest astronomical observatory yet identified in the Americas, it dates back some 4,200 years based on radiocarbon dating of burnt materials found in what is interpreted as an offering pit of the temple. Some of the experts are surprised to see evidence of such sophistication and advanced knowledge at such an early period in South American history. However, I am not surprised. Contemporaneously, advanced civilizations were flourishing in Egypt and the Middle East, as well as in the Far East, so why not South America as well? We are all one species, and there may well have been cultural interchange, even if somewhat limited, across the oceans during that very early epoch. At the least, it is something to think about.