2005/01/01 by David F. Mora‐Marín · 23 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Latin American history and culture #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory #Maya #Linguistics #History #Archaeology #Anthropology #Geography #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1017/s0956536105050029
published in Ancient Mesoamerica 16(1), 63-87 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2005/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This paper examines various lines of evidence for the classification and linguistic affiliation of writing at Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu. The linguistic evidence for the ethnic composition of the Maya highlands and Pacific slopes during the Late Preclassic period points to contact among Ch'olan-Tzeltalan, Greater K'iche'an, and other non-Mayan languages, and to a dominant political economic role of Ch'olan-Tzeltalan. The epigraphic evidence supports classifying the script together with the Lowland Mayan script, and separately from the Epi-Olmec script, and hints at the presence of uniquely Ch'olan traits, some of which have been pointed out by other authors. A comparison with contemporaneous texts of unambiguous Lowland Mayan (Ch'olan or Yukatekan) affiliation suggests an overlap of orthographic, calligraphic, and semantic traits. Both lines of evidence support the hypotheses that Ch'olan-Tzeltalan speakers were the innovators of the Maya script, and that such a development perhaps took place in the Maya highlands. At the very least, the evidence points to a much closer relationship between the Maya highlands and lowlands during the Late Preclassic than previously thought.