Two pieces of art, valued at US$53,000, were found to have been stolen from an archaelogical site in Mexico.
A civil court in Munich ordered a Costa Rican art merchant living in Germany to return two pieces of pre-Colombian art to Mexico, after finding they had been acquired illegally. A witness declared that art dealer Leonardo Patterson told him a tomb raider stole the works from a Mexican archeological site in El Manati, a sacred place of the Olmec people, and that he then acquired them from a dealer. The Olmec civilization is allegedly more ancient than the Mayas and was one of the major influences on Mayan culture. Patterson, who maintains that he legally obtained the art, did not say whether he will appeal the sentence. RELATED: Spain Returning over 100 Pieces of Stolen Art to Ecuador Patterson's criminal record as an art smuggler began in 1984, with the dealer found to have illegally acquired in many countries, including the United States, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Spain and Germany. A few days earlier, Patterson was sentenced to three years probation because of “his advanced age” (73) for “deceptively selling a piece of recent manufacture as an archaeological artifact of Mexican origin to a German citizen.” The German court said the Mexican Secretary of Exterior Relations and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) collaborated in its investigation into the origins of the Olmec art. The Mexican Public Ministry filed a lawsuit against Patterson when he sold one of the pieces to a German citizen. The piece of art consisted of an anthropomorphic head manufactured in basalt, known as “Olmec colossal heads.” This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
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