Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. A reappraisal of the development of the Mayan Syllabary. Written Language & Literacy 27(2):218–265.

https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/wll.00089.mor

Abstract

This paper revisits the problem of the derivation of phonographic signs in Mayan writing (cf. Mora-Marín 2003). The primary goal is to evaluate Lacadena’s (2005, 2010a, 2010b) proposal that the Mayan syllabary was initially derived through the wholesale adoption of a Mixe-Zoquean-based script. Lacadena argued that Mayan <CV> syllabograms with consonants shared by both Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean generally lack acrophonic explanations, while <CV> syllabograms for consonants exclusive to Mayan can be explained either by Mayan-based acrophony or graphic modifications of existing graphemes (i.e. addition of graphic elements, or coinage of digraphs). After 1) preparing a more comprehensive dataset of Mayan syllabograms using the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (Looper and Macri 1991–2024), and 2) conducting a more thorough review of the literature for possible acrophonic derivations and the nature of graphic modifications and seemingly digraphic combinations, the paper carries out a statistical test of a syllabary development model based on Lacadena’s proposal, concluding that such model is not viable, and that on present evidence, the Mayan syllabary was mostly an autochtonous invention.

Key words: acrophony, Mayan epigraphy, Mixe-Zoquean, orthographic conventions

Supplementary Materials:

Appendix1Comprehensive

Appendix2MajorAllograms

Appendix1References

MORA-MARÍN, D. Historical Sociolinguistics of the Classic Maya Lowlands: The Generic Preposition Variable. Cadernos de Linguística, [S. l.], v. 6, n. 1, p. e794, 2025. DOI: 10.25189/2675-4916.2025.v6.n1.id794.

Drawings of Two Incised Earflares with Comments on Embedded Glyphs

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

8/23/25

In 2003 the author visited a private collection to study an inscribed greenstone statuette, cataloged as (K3261), whose partial documentation and analysis constitute one of the topics of the report in Mora-Marín (2004). During the visit to the same collection, the author had the chance to photograph several other artifacts, including a pair of large jade earflares, of essentially the same dimensions, and carved out of the same type of jadeite—both probably fashioned from the same block of raw material, seen in Figures 1 and 2.  As noted by Houston and Tokovinine (2011), the two earflares were likely crafted and inscribed by the same artisan and scribe.

Figure 1

Figure 2

A few years after my visit I learned of the research by Tokovinine and Fialko (2007a, 2007b), documenting Stela 45 at the site and the iconographically- and textually-embedded glyphic mentions of some early royal names at the site of Naranjo, specifically, the one referred to by those authors as Naatz Chan Ahk and Tzik’in B’ahlam, which I began to suspect could be related to the names attested on one of the earflares, especially since the other earflare appeared to bear the Naranjo  emblem glyph main sign, as will be reviewed below. In 2011, I emailed several epigraphers with a slideshow illustrating the earflares and raising the possible connection to Naranjo’s rulers mentioned on Stela 45. At the time, Alexandre Tokovinine responded, expressing uncertainty about whether the content of the flares showed an unambiguous connection with Naranjo.

Two years later, Houston and Tokovinine (2013) published an online report on three artifacts, including the earflares in question, in which they not only provided line drawings of the incised designs, but also discussed their iconography and embedded glyphs (cf. Houston and Tokovinine 2013:Fig. 3).

Next, I present my own drawings of the earflares, highlighting the places where my drawings differ from those in Houston and Tokovine (2013). I also offer a brief review of the evidence for the embedded glyphic names.

The present drawings, seen in Figures 3A and 3B, are based on the photographs that I took in 2003 (Figure 1), my freehand sketches prepared during that visit, not illustrated here, as well as corrections undertaken with the help of photos generously shared by Donald Hales in June of 2021, seen in Figure 4. Better drawings based higher-resolution photographs taken with better lighting, or by means of RTI or 3D scanning technologies, should be attempted in the future, as there remain many details that need clarification.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Since I originally used my own photographs as a basis for tracing the imagery and glyphs, Figures 5 and 6 juxtapose those photos with my drawings.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Now, returning to the imagery and glyphs, I strongly recommend the reader consult Houston and Tokovinine (2011) first. Those authors discuss the imagery on each earflare, for one, as follows:

Carved by the same lapidary artist, the pair clearly forms a coherent whole. One depicts the so-called “baktun” bird, perhaps a celestial eagle. Its pectoral indicates some close but unspecified tie to the Principal Bird Deity. The other displays, not a bird in full flight, but a swimming lizard with scutes running up and down his front and back legs. The central design, a quadripartite element with four lobes, appears to represent a cavity at the center of each creature. Was this a witty reference to the central perforation or an allusion to their emergent state?

Next, a few notes comparing the two sets of drawings available. Figure 7 shows the areas where my drawing differs in minor or more significant details from that by Alexandre Tokovinine’s in Houston and Tokovinine (2011:Fig. 3). A few of the details are probably more accurate in Tokovinine’s drawing, but others are more clearly visible in the photos provided by Donald Hales, and thus are more complete in my drawings. Neither set of drawings is complete, though.

Figure 7

Regarding the embedded glyphs, I am in general agreement with the findings in Houston and Tokovinine (2011). My renderings of the glyphs are extracted and shown in Figures 8 and 9. Despite minor differences of graphic details, the glyphs in the first earflare are rendered largely in agreement with Tokovinine’s rendering (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Earflare with Reptilian/Amphibian creature.

In the second earflare, though, a few details are somewhat different. One small difference is seen in Figure 9A, where the embedded glyphic collocations contains a syllabogram tzi (or logogram TZIK for tzik ‘to (re)count’), which was not rendered in Tokovinine’s drawing. A second small detail is the more complete rendering of what may be the logogram SAK ‘white’ (Figure 9C).

Figure 9

As noted by Houston and Tokovinine (2011), the earflares likely came from either Naranjo or Rio Azul, with the na-tzu ʔAK name documented in at least six Early Classic texts from those two sites, including two stelae and a pottery vessel from Naranjo (Lopes 2005; Tokovinine and Fialko 2007a, 2007b; Stuart et al. 2023) and a mural and a vessel from Rio Azul (Stuart 1987; Kerr 1989:84), and of course, the likely presence of the main sign of the Naranjo Emblem Glyph, SAʔ, tilting the balance in favor of that site.

The next obvious step is to further document the earflares with better imaging and more accurate drawings.

Acknowledgments: Thanks are due to Alexandre Tokovinine for a brief email correspondence regarding the earflares in 2011, and to Donald Hales for the photos of the earflares.

References

Houston, Stephen, and Alexandre Tokovinine. 2013. REPORT: An Earful of Glyphs from Guatemala. Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography. https://mayadecipherment.com/2013/07/14/report-an-earful-of-glyphs-from-guatemala/.

Kerr, Justin. 1989. The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases 1. New York: Kerr Associates.
Lopes, Luís. 2005 A Probable Reference to Na-“Gourd” Chan Ahk on Naranjo Stela 15. Mesoweb: www.mesoweb.com/articles/lopes/ProbableReference.pdf.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2004. The Primary Standard Sequence: Database Compilation, Grammatical Analysis, and Primary Documentation. FAMSI report. URL: http://www.famsi.org/reports/02047/index.html.

Stuart, David. 1987. The Paintings of Tomb 12, Rio Azul. In Rio Azul Reports Number 3: The 1985 Season, edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 161–167. San Antonio, Texas: University of Texas at San Antonio.

Stuart, David, Tomás Barrientos, Alexandre Tokovinine, and Daniel Aquino. 2023. La recuperación de la estela 43 de Naranjo: un breve acercamiento a la importancia histórica e iconográfica de un monumento maya perdido. In 35 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2022, Tomo 1, edited by Bárbara Arroyo, Luis Méndez Salinas, and Gloria Aju Alvarez, pp. 219–232. Guatemala City: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Instituto de Antropología e Historia, Asociación Tikal.

Tokovinine, Alexandre y Vilma Fialko. 2007a. La Estela 45 de Naranjo: Un análisis preliminar de su iconografía y epigrafía. In 20 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2006, edited by Juan Pedro Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo, and Héctor Mejía, pp. 1140–1159. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala. (Versión digital). https://www.mesoweb.com/Simposio/pdf/20/Tokovinine_y_Fialko.2007.pdf.

—–. 2007b. Stela 45 of Naranjo and the Early Classic Lords of Sa’aal. The PARI Journal 7(4):1–14. https://www.precolumbia.org/pari/journal/archive/PARI0704.pdf.

CSV Files

Appendix 1. Accession Statements Dataset. AccessionDataset

Appendix 2. Generic Preposition Dataset. GenericPrepositions

Appendix 3. Northern Region Ch’olan Terms Dataset. NorthernRegionCholanTerms

HE6 Is ʔu Not u (Repeat as Needed with Other ʔV Syllabograms)

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

7/23/25, minor edits on 7/28/25

This note aims to change folks’ opinion on the notion that there are V phonograms in Mayan writing. Instead, so-called vocalic signs need to be conceptualized as canonical ʔV syllabograms.

The idea of vocalic signs stems from two common but erroneous ideas: 1) that glottal stops are “weak” consonants that are typically ignored in writing systems; and 2) that glottal stops are not phonemic in initial positions in Mayan languages. Both of these ideas are unsurprisingly held by linguists and scholars whose native languages typically lack phonemic glottal stops, and who are literate in writing systems that evolved in languages lacking phonemic glottal stops. These ideas are also undoubtedly influenced by the long-standing tradition of study of Colonial orthographies of indigenous languages, which were typically designed by speakers of European languages (e.g. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, English) lacking phonemic glottal stops, and typically ignoring their orthographic representation.

Despite the lack of a grapheme for glottal stop in such European-derived orthographies, indigenous scribes who have adopted such orthographies have developed ways to indicate the presence of an initial glottal stop in contexts that matter (when the root-initial glottal stop is itself preceded by a proclitic, or by a prepound when forming part of a compound word).

This note therefore has a similar objective to Kaufman’s (2015) and Hopkins’s (2018): to explain and rectify the misconceptions about initial glottal stops in the Mayanist literature. But before reviewing what these authors have said, and providing additional evidence supportive of their observations and appeals, I begin with a recent argument by Campbell (2017), who supports the lack of phonemic status of the glottal stop in initial position. Indeed, in what is likely to become a highly influential overview of Mayan historical linguistics, Campbell (2017:18, footnote 3) remarks:

Most Mayan morphemes are monosyllabic, and PM [Proto-Mayan] had the possible syllable shapes (canonical forms): CVC, CV:C, CVC₁C₂, and CV₁ʔV₁C, where in CVC₁C₂ the C₁ of the consonant cluster was limited to h, ʔ, or a fricative s, š, or x. In each of these, the initial consonant is in fact optional. That is, traditionally Mayanists have followed Terrence Kaufman in repeating these canonical shapes with an initial C under the belief that the vowel initial ones really had a glottal stop as their onsets. However, since Proto-Mayan has a different set of possessive and ergative pronominal markers that attach to vowel-initial roots distinct from the set that attaches to consonant- initial forms, it is clear that not all Mayan morphemes should be considered consonant-initial, that PM also had vowel-initial morphemes, so that in the conventional canonical forms, the first C should be understood as optional, as (C)VC, (C)V:C, (C)VC₁C₂, and (C)V₁ʔV₁C. (Kaufman sometimes interprets CV₁ʔV₁C as equivalent to CV:ʔC.)

Campbell circulated his unpublished draft in 2015. This is the same year when Hopkins and Kaufman, separately, wrote and circulated papers on the topic. I begin with Hopkins, whose draft was circulated first.

Writing with epigraphers in mind, very few of whom recognize the importance of the glottal stop as a phoneme, much less consider it systematically when studying the orthographic principles of the ancient script, Hopkins (2018:268) observed: “Without exception, the phonological inventories of Mayan languages include the glottal stop as a consonant, and this consonant occurs in all structural positions: initial, medial, and final.”[1] In his review of the literature, Hopkins also traces the problem to the transcription practices by Spanish scribes during the Colonial period, to whom the glottal stop was an unfamiliar phonological unit which they typically did not represent. Then, more recently, scholars began to write the glottal stop by means of an apostrophe (saltillo), except in initial position, in which case words in Yucatec Maya, for example, are written as if vowel-initial, even by scholars who knew better. The result, Hopkins (2018:270) notes, was to be expected:

[…] the orthographic convention left the impression that the glottal stop did not occur at the beginning of words. This impression is now firmly established. It is a rare dictionary that writes initial glottal stops, and a rare grammar that does not refer to “vowel-initial” words […].

Hopkins also alludes to Terrence Kaufman’s convention of not writing initial glottal stops, but does not describe the context for such practice.

This is, in fact, where Kaufman (2015) picks up the story regarding the confusion. He begins by describing the background research carried out during the early 1970s, which led to the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM), which trained native speakers of Mayan languages in linguistics. At this point, Kaufman (2015:5) notes that at that time both William Norman and himself believed that lexemes in the K’iche’an Proper languages could begin with vowels, but that that [ʔ] was inserted predictably in “absolute phrase-initial position.” Kaufman (2015:5) then explains (using <7> as a practical replacement for <ʔ>):

This led us to see as good the notion of not writing initial [7], because in these languages [but these languages ONLY!] initial [7] can be viewed as inserted phonetically. Unfortunately, we unwisely adopted this custom for all the languages of the PLFM, and this custom has been wrongly followed by some Mayanists working on Mexican Mayan languages.

Kaufman and Norman’s “unwise” lack of representation of initial glottal stops was applied in their proto-Ch’olan vocabulary and phonology (Kaufman and Norman 1984), whose influence on Mayan epigraphic research cannot be overstated. Kaufman with Justeson (2003) have corrected this, with proto-Ch’olan forms now cited with initial glottal stop, as in the case of *7@k’b’.@l [*ʔək’b’.əl] ‘darkness’ (2003:450).

It is perhaps in recognition of the impending influence of Campbell’s (2017) essay, as well as to once and for all reverse the earlier mistake during the PLFM regarding orthographic conventions, as well as his earlier characterization of the K’iche’an languages, that Kaufman (2015) presented a detailed discussion of initial glottal stops in Mayan.

One of Kaufman’s key arguments relates to the fact that in K’iche’an there exist contexts that suggest that initial glottal stop is in fact phonemic. This is important, as already noted, because Greater K’iche’an is the only subgroup where Kaufman himself, along with William Norman, once thought that initial glottal stops were purely phonetic. One such context that strongly points to the phonemic status of initial glottal stops in Greater K’iche’an relates to reduplication (Kaufman 2015:4–5):

In fact, the analysis we made of K’ichee7-Poqom was wrong. When morphemes of the shape /7VC/ are reduplicated, /7/ is present as part of the reduplication. Thus when the numeral root {7ox} ‘three’ is reduplicated, it is [7ox7ox] ‘three by three’, which it would be bone-headed to phonemicize as /ox7ox/: it must be /7ox=7ox/. Reduplication has to reduplicate something; therefore underlyingly the root is {7ox}. This being so, there has to be another way of accounting for the presence vs absence of [7] at the beginning of lexical roots in word initial position. It is preferable to analyze these words as starting with /7/, and postulate a rule that says ..VC # 7V.. => ..VCV..

It is in fact not difficult to find similar justifications, as well as new ones, to support the initial phonemic status of the glottal stop in other Mayan languages. Indeed, in almost all Mayan languages, including the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan and Yucatecan languages, glottal stops are phonemic in all positions (Kaufman 2015; Hopkins 2018), and only a very few morphemes, all of them grammatical proclitics belonging to the Set A pronominal paradigm for ergative/possessive agreement (i.e. a-, u- generally; in- in some languages), are truly vowel-initial.

This statement can be readily supported by observing that initial glottal stops are retained in a variety of contexts: 1) after the reflexes of proto-Mayan *ʔaj= and *ʔix=, the so-called “male” and “female” classifiers, respectively, both of which are characterized by Kaufman (2015) as prepounds (i.e. the first term in a compound term) but which may be proclitics instead; 2) after more common roots used as prepounds in compound terms; and 3) as the initial consonant of certain consonant-initial suffixes.

I begin by illustrating a few cases of phonemic glottal stops immediately following the “male” and “female” classifiers:

1. After a male or female classifier (i.e. reflexes of proto-Mayan *ʔaj= and *ʔix=, as in K’ichee’ ʔaj=ʔiitz for ‘witch’ (Kaufman 2015:6), or Ch’ol x’ec’ ‘chaya, malamujer’, based on x= ‘female proclitic’ and ʔek’ ‘chaya’, and Ch’ol aj’e’telob ‘autoridades’, based on ʔaj= ‘male proclitic’ and ʔeʔtel(-ob) ‘trabajo; autoridad(es)’ (Aulie and Aulie 2009:88).

Next are a few cases illustrating the phonemic status of root- and stem-initial glottal stop after a prepound in compound terms, both simplex and complex:

2. After the first term of a compound, as in Ch’ol tun’at for tun=ʔat ‘testicles’ based on tun ‘stone’ and ʔat ‘penis’ (Aulie and Aulie 2009:31, 94), where the glottal stop may even influence the final consonant of the preceding root causing its glottalization, as in Ch’ol pepech’ak’ ‘vine that is spread out on the ground’ (Aulie and Aulie 2009:71), analyzed as pe-pech=ʔak’, based on the prepound pech ‘flat’ > pepech ‘very flat’ (partial duplication derives intensified adjetives), and the postpound ʔak’ ‘vine’.

The following is an example where a -CV suffix begins with glottal stop:

3. With the highly productive inchoative suffix –ʔa-n ~ ʔa in Ch’ol, as in k’än-ʔan ‘to ripen; to become pale’, k’un-ʔan ‘to soften; to weaken’, sen-ʔan ‘to get stiff/numb’ (Aulie and Aulie 2009:20, 23, 83), among many others.

And last, the following are cases like the word-initial one adduced by Kaufman (2015:6) for K’iche’, cited above:

4. In reduplication processes, whether word-initially, as in K’ichee’ (ch+)ʔox=ʔox junaab’ ‘(at) a frequency of every three years’, or word-medially, as in Tzotzil derivations with -C₁un ‘affective suffix’, such as x-bik’-b’un ‘wanting to kill’, based on bik’ ‘to swallow’, and x-ʔach’-ʔun ‘dampness coming out’, based on ʔach’ ‘wet’ (Kaufman 2015:6), and as in affective derivations with -[CVC]₁-na(l) in Ch’ol and Yokot’an, as in Yokot’an ʔej-ʔej-na ‘bujando, gruñendo (to make noise, to grunt)’ (Keller and Luciano 1997:113).

What such examples tell us is that the deletion of initial glottal stops upon addition of a Set A prefix (e.g. y-), or proclitic-plus-prefix sequence (e.g. a-w-, u-y-), is not evidence that noun and verb roots that experience such deletion are vowel-initial. Instead, such examples constitute evidence of a morphophonological process specific to Set A proclitics and prefixes, not a strictly phonological process. The phonological process often cited to is epenthesis. However, as observed by Kaufman (2015:9–10), the epenthetic glides in Mayan languages are typically [h], [ʔ], and [y], not [r] or [w]. And historically speaking, at least, the [y] of Ch’olan (i)y- or Yucatecan (u)y- ‘third person singular prevocalic ergative/possessive’ is a reflex of proto-Mayan *r, which did not function as a glide in the Set A pronominal system of proto-Mayan, just as it does not in contemporary languages that have preserved /r/ from proto-Mayan *r.

Moreover, as Kaufman (2015:9) explains, both the omission of initial /ʔ/ upon addition of a Set A marker regardless of its underlying shape as either //VVC++// (e.g. proto-Mayan *aaw++ ‘A2’ and *eer++ ‘A5’) or //CV++// (e.g. proto-Mayan *qa++ ‘A4’ and *ki++ ‘A6’), as well as the contraction of vowel clusters to a single /V/ upon addition of a Set A marker of an underlying //CV++// shape, occur only with Set A proclitic markers. Such processes do not occur with other proclitics (aspect markers, absolutive markers) or with enclitics (absolutive markers), or in other contexts involving non-clitic morphemes (as already illustrated above). According to Kaufman, these two phenomena occur only with the Set A markers, which unlike the other clitics or word classes, are extrametrical; Kaufman (2015:9) notes that otherwise, /VV/ clusters will typically result in long vowels (i.e. [V:]). Thus, Kaufman (2015:9) attributes such behavior to the extrametrical proclitic status of Set A markers.

I will illustrate the problem now with the case of T1/HE6, the syllabogram ʔu. Some scholars in the past and present have assumed it to be “vocalic sign” u (e.g. Justeson 1989:33; Helmke et al. 2018:139; Kettunen and Helmke 2020:74), instead of a consonant-initial syllabogram ʔu. While it is true that it was used to spell /#u…/ sequences, specifically in the spelling of the proclitic u- ‘third person singular ergative/possessive’, the only /#u…/ initial morpheme in your typical Mayan language, it is also used to spell /#ʔu…/ sequences, as in the spelling of ʔuk’ ‘to drink’ (e.g. Piedras Negras Panel 3:P1, ʔu-ʔUK’-ni for ʔuk’-n-i-Ø ‘he drank’; Copan Altar U:K2, ti-ʔu-ʔUK’ for ti ʔuk’[-Vl] ‘drinking’) or ʔuht ‘to be finished; to happen’ (e.g. Tikal Stela 39:zB7, ʔu-ʔUH/ʔuh-ti for ʔu[h]t-i-Ø ‘it got finished; it happened’).

It is also noteworthy that native-speaker writers of Mayan languages, who typically employ alphabetic orthographies designed or inspired by Spanish orthography, and which, as a result, typically lack a grapheme for glottal stop since it lacks phonemic status in Spanish, have developed ways to indicate, at least in situations when it really matters, that a root-initial glottal stop is in fact present. Sometimes a hyphen is employed, for example, after male or female proclitics, as in the cases of Yucatec x-uunil ~ uunil ‘type of large ant that lives in the cracks and holes of dried trees’, and j-il kaab ‘abejero (male beekeeper)’ or x-il kaab ‘abejera (female beekeeper)’ (ALMY 2007:238, 278), based on ʔil ‘to see’ and kaab ‘bee’. Other times, a space is used after the first term of a compound when the following term begins with a glottal stop, as in Yucatec kok áak ‘pequeña tortuga terrestre que se usa para curar el asma y la tos persistente (small tortoise that is used for curing asthma and persistent cough)’ (ALMY 2007:98), for the compound kok=ʔáak, based on kok ‘asthma’ and ʔáak ‘turtle’. It is syllabified /kok.ʔáak/, not /ko.káak/, with the latter being the syllabification expected if the glottal stop of /ʔáak/ were not phonemic. Given this, glottal stops generally behave like any other consonant, and there is no reason to believe that ancient scribes would have treated them otherwise, with the exception being situations when a root-initial /ʔ/ is omitted when a Set A proclitic is applied.

The idea of V signs instead of ʔV signs was influenced by the Colonial alphabetic orthographies, such as that of Yucatec, in which vowel-doubling was used to spell final glottal stops: to the Spanish ear, a final glottal stop in some instances can sound like a repetition (rearticulation) of a final vowel. But again, the Colonial Yucatec orthography is based on Spanish orthographic practices and the absence of a grapheme for glottal stop, consequently, is due to the absence of a such a phoneme in Spanish. The idea has also been influenced, undoubtedly, by the fact that Mayanist epigraphers and linguists are themselves primarily speakers of Indo-European languages lacking a phonemic glottal stop. This parallels, as Hopkins (2018:265) has succinctly explained, the way in which the Hebrew (more generally Semitic) ‘aleph sign (which means ‘ox’), for the glottal stop, was reinterpreted by the Greeks: “Foreshadowing its later misunderstanding in Maya studies, when this letter passed from Middle Eastern writing to Greek, which lacked the glottal stop phoneme, it was taken to transcribe a vowel rather than a consonant, and became Greek alpha, representing the vowel a. Thus, A (an inverted ox head) begins the alphabet in Western writing.”

To conclude, when it comes to the glottal stop phoneme in Mayan languages and its representation in Mayan writing, the null hypothesis should be that ancient scribes treated glottal stops as consonants in all positions, and therefore, that a grapheme like HE6 was understood by Mayan scribes canonically as ʔu, not u, and that this was the case of all glottal stop-initial syllabograms (i.e. ʔi, ʔe, ʔa, ʔu, ʔo). The burden of proof should rest on epigraphers referring to such graphemes as “vocalic signs” (i.e. i, e, a, u, o).

References

Academia de la Lengua Maya de Yucatán. 2007. Diccionario Maya Popular, Maya – Español, Español – Maya. Mérida, Yucatán: ALMY, A.C.

Campbell, Lyle. 2017. Mayan history and comparison. In The Mayan Languages, edited by Judith Aissen, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, pp. 43-61. London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.

Helmke, Christophe, Joseph W. Ball, and Jennifer T. Taschek. 2018. A Classic Maya Carved Capstone from Buenavista del Cayo, Belize. Mexicon, 40: 134-142.

Hopkins, Nicholas. 2018. Saltillo: Not Just a Town in Northern Mexico. In Tiempo detenido, tiempo suficiente: ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, edited by Harri Kettunen, Verónica Amellali Vázquez López, Felix Kupprat, Cristina Vidal Lorenzo, Gaspar Muñoz Cosme, María Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, pp. 265-274. Belgium: European Association of Mayanists WAYEB.

Justeson, John S. 1989. The representational conventions of Mayan hieroglyphic writing. In Word and Image in Maya Culture: Explorations in Language, Writing, and Representation, edited by William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice, pp. 25–38. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1967. Preliminary Mocho Vocabulary. Working Paper Number 5, Laboratory for Language-Behavior Research, University of California, Berkeley.

—–. 2015. Initial glottal stop in Mayan languages. Unpublished note circulated by email May of 2015. URL: < https://www.albany.edu/ims/pdlma-web/Kaufman-2015-initial_glottal_stop_in_Mayan.pdf >.

—–. 2017. Aspects of the Lexicon of Proto-Mayan and Its Earliest Descendants. In The Mayan Languages, edited by Judith Aissen, Nora C. England, and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, pp. 62-111. London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.

Kaufman, Terrence, with John Justeson. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/index.html.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman. 1984. An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. In Phoneticism in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77-166. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9. Albany: State University of New York.

Kettunen, Harri, and Christophe Helmke. 2020. Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs. Seventeenth Revised Edition. Wayeb.

[1] Nick Hopkins first shared his draft in May of 2016. I am citing from the rewritten, published version from 2018.

Un nuevo dibujo de la inscripción de la “máscara” de “Phoenix” o “Wray”

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

27/6/25, 9/7/25

Esta nota tiene como objetivo el de introducir un nuevo dibujo de la inscripción del reverso de una de las dos “máscaras” supuestamente provenientes del sitio de Rio Azul (Petén, Guatemala).

El artefacto en cuestión, asignado el código (objabbr) COLJMsk en el Maya Hieroglyphic Database (MHD) por Looper y Macri (1991–2025), consiste de una “máscara” de piedra verde “de 19,7 cm de alto, 15 cm de ancho y 7 cm de grosor” (Mayer 1987:138), introducida al público en general por medio de una representación artística a color (Figura 1) en la portada de la revista National Geographic Magazine en 1986 (número 4, volumen 169). El editor de la revista en aquel entonces, Wilbur E. Garrett, explicó que la máscara seguramente habría sido una de una cantidad desconocida de artefactos saqueados de la Tumba 1 de Rio Azul.

Figure 1. Portada del número 4, volumen 169, de NGM.

Aunque hubo menciones de la máscara antes del árticulo de National Geographic (Emmerich 1984: No. 19; Berjonneau and Sonnery 1985: No. 326; Graham 1986: 45), fue hasta un año despúes de tal artículo que dos autores, Hellmuth (1987) y Mayer (1987), publicaron comentarios mas detallados sobre el mismo, e incluyeron dibujos de las superficies grabadas. Hellmuth, en su Monster und Menschen in der Maya-Kunst: eine Ikonographie der alten Religionen Mexikos und Guatemalas, escribió principalmente sobre la iconografía de la máscara y su relación con parte de la inscripción. Por su parte, Mayer, en su artículo en la revista del museo Volkermunde, menciona que la máscara parece estar hecha de fucsita y también provee un resumen de su iconografía y algunos de las expresiones glíficas. Ambos autores incluyeron los mismos dibujos (Figure 2), preparados por Melih Yerlikaya, y ambos describen al personaje representado como una versión de GI (God I), definido originalmente como un dios patrono del sitio de Palenque, pero más generalmente, un aspecto del dios Chahuk/Chahk, el dios de la lluvia. Éste lleva, a manera de tocado, una versión de la “Insignia Cuatripartita” (Quadripartite Badge), el cual representa un plato de ofrendas ceremonial.

Figure 2. Dibujos por Melih Yerlikaya.

Existen por lo menos dos dibujos más de la inscripción. Uno por Stephen Houston, pero solo un par de detalles del mismo han sido publicados (p.ej. Houston 1986:6, Fig. 7d; Houston et al. 2001:6, Fig. 4a). Otro es el de Sebastian Matteo, disponible en el archivo de dibujos de Wayeb.org (Figura 3).

Figura 3. Dibujo del reverso de la máscara por Sebastian Matteo.

La versión por el presente autor (Figura 4), basada en dos fotografías generosamente proporcionadas por Donald Hales, no debe de considerarse definitiva: sin duda existen muchos detalles que podrían definirse con mayor certeza mediante una examinación directa de la pieza. (El pigmento rojo añadido en las incisiones a veces no se implementó correctamente; incisiones sin pigmento son muy difíciles de percibir, algunos detalles con pigmento no son incisiones intencionales sino que rayones accidentales.) Pero la versión presente sí contiene detalles ausentes de por lo menos algunas de las versiones anteriores. El dibujo es un calco realizado con una tableta digital Wacom en Photoshop.

Figure 4. Dibujo por el autor. Se permite su uso con propósito didáctico/académico.

Por ahora, concluyo esta nota con una explicación básica pero preliminar (transliteración, transcripción, traducción) del texto, como se aprecia en la Figura 5. Pronto ofreceré más detalles al respecto y opciones más variadas para el análisis. (B4b podría contener, alternativamente a lo que se sugiere en esta ilustración, una expresión de los tres años transcurridos, lo que significa que B4b y A5 constituirían un doblete repetitivo, al menos de manera parcial.) La diferencia más importante con respecto a comentarios previous (cf. Houston et al. 2001:6, Fig. 4a) es que no considero el uso de T12/1G4 ʔAJ/ʔaj/ʔa como modo de marcar un sufijo derivacional *-aʔ (para formar sustantivos agentivos), sino que más bien como forma de marcar un sufijo derivacional incoativo *-ʔa.

Figura 5. Transliteración, transcripción, traducción.

Agradecimientos: a Nicholas Hellmuth for permitirme el uso de sus dibujos, y a Donald Hales, por proporcionarme las fotografías que fueron instrumentales para esta labor.

Referencias

Aulie, Wilbur H., and Evelyn W. de Aulie. 1999[1978]. Diccionario Ch’ol-Español, Español-Ch’ol. Mexico City: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Berjonneau, Gerald, and Jean-Louis Sonnery. 1985. Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica. Editions Arts 135.

Bricker, Victoria, Eleuterio Po’ot Yah, and Ofelia Dzul de Po’ot. 1998. A Dictionary of The Maya Language As Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Emmerich, André. 1984. Masterpieces of Pre-Columbian Art from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Peter G. Wray. André Emmerich Galery and Perls Galleries. Nwe York, NY.

Garrett, Wilbur E. 1986. Editorial. National Geographic 169:419. Washington, D.C.

Graham, lan. 1986. Looters Rob Our Graves and History. National Geographic 169:452–461.
Washington, D.C.

Houston, Stephen D. 1986. Problematic Emblem Glyphs: Examples from Altar de Sacrificios, El Chorro, Río Azul, and Xultun. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 3. Washington, D.C.: Center for Maya Research.

Houston, Stephen D., John Robertson, and David S. Stuart. 2001. Quality and Quantity in Glyphic Nouns and Adjectives. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 47. Washington D.C.: Center for Maya Research.

Looper, Matthew G., and Martha J. Macri. 1991–2025. Maya Hieroglyphic Database. Department of Art and Art History, California State University, Chico. URL: http://www.mayadatabase.org/.

Looper, Matthew G., Martha J. Macri, Yuriy Polyukhovych, and Gabrielle Vail. 2022a. MHD Reference Materials 1: Preliminary Revised Glyph Catalog. Glyph Dwellers Report 71. http://glyphdwellers.com/pdf/R71.pdf.

Looper, Matthew G., Martha J. Macri, Yuriy Polyukhovych, and Gabrielle Vail. 2022b. The Historical Development of the Maya Script: Preliminary Results. Glyph Dwellers Report 75. http://glyphdwellers.com/pdf/R75.pdf.

Matteo, Sebastian. https://wayeb.org/drawings/raz_jade_mask.png

Mayer, Karl Herbert. 1987. Drei Frühklassische Maya Miszellen-Texte. Archiv für Völkerkunde 41:137–144. Vienna.

The Cascajal Block: Iconographic Motivations, Part 3

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

10/25/24

This is a continuation of the sub-series begun with Note 26 (Mora-Marín 2022) and Note 33 (Mora-Marín 2023). These two installments, combined, outlined possible iconographic motivations for the nine most frequent signs on the Cascajal Block (Rodríguez et al. 2006a, 2006b). My original manuscript (initially Mora-Marín 2006, revised as Mora-Marín 2010) on this topic will once again serve as the basis for this second installment, though this note also incorporates scholarship that has become available since then (e.g. Magni 2012; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015; Mora-Marín 2019, 2020, 2024).

The methodology I established in that manuscript, and reproduced in my Notes 26 and 33, is repeated here in full:

1. Use Joralemon’s (1971) motif catalog to identify signs in the Cascajal signary, a task not attempted in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), and only selectively in Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), who provide Joralemon numbers for CS6, CS16, and CS1/12/27.
2. Restrict comparisons to Early and Middle Preclassic Olmec-style art to the extent that is possible, and avoid comparisons with much later writing and artistic traditions as much as possible.
3. Include iconographic sources for such motifs to determine whether the identification is plausible, whenever Joralemon’s gloss or description of the motif is not sufficient or available.
4. Check against the identifications proposed in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), Justeson (2006, 2012), Ortiz et al. (2007), Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), Anderson (2007), Mora-Marín (2009), Freidel and Reilly (2010), Magni (2012[2008]), and Carrasco and Englehardt (2015).

This third installments considers five more signs that occur three times within the Cascajal Block text (Figure 1); more specifically, I consider signs CS9, CS15, CS16, CS26, and CS28 (Figure 2) (Mora-Marín 2020).

Figure 1

Figure 2

I begin then with CS9. Table 1 presents  the relevant descriptions and identifications by a variety of authors. Figure 3 presents the comparison I offered in Mora-Marín (2010); a similar comparison is provided in Mora-Marín (2020a:220, 2020b:Suppl. Figures 3 and 4), where I suggest CS2 and CS9 represented the same iconographic referent, a design depicting a bag or bundle with a tripartite top. Indeed, Mora-Marín (2009:404) had already suggested, based on a structural analysis, that the two signs were functioning as one in the inscription. The comparison offered in Figure 3 only partially meets the criteria outlined above: it compares CS9 (Figure 3a) and CS2 (Figure 3b) to a depiction of an iconographic motif present on a Middle Preclassic celt from the Chalcatzingo area (Figure 3c), but it also compares them to a depiction of an iconographic motif from the Late Preclassic San Bartolo murals from the Maya region (Figure 3d). The Mayan motif from San Bartolo resembles what would be obtained if one blended CS2 and CS9 into a single motif. While it posdates the Cascajal Block by several centuries, the structural analysis reported on in Mora-Marín (2020:220, 2009:404) suggests CS2 and CS9 have the same value or function; adding to this their general graphic similarity, and the possibility that they depict the same object is strengthened. CS9 and the San Bartolo motif share a horizontal band in between the tripartite top element and the oblong bottom element.

Table 1

Figure 3

This paper regards CS15 (Table 2) to be a possible depiction of a plant or an insect, but no iconographic parallels appear convincing so far, including no close matches in Joralemon (1971).  This author agrees with Justeson (2006) in identifying CS27 as a misdrawn instance of CS15, which means there are three cases of CS15 (Figure 4).

Table 2

Figure 4

Table 3 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS16. This paper regards CS16 (Figure 5) to correspond to Joralemon’s Motif 73, a depiction of a “knuckleduster” (Figure 6); this is what other scholars have.

Table 3

Figure 5

Figure 6

Table 4  provides a summary of proposals regarding CS26. This paper regards this sign (Figure 7) to be a depiction of the Crossed-bands motif (Joralemon’s Motif 99) that is commonly present in juxtaposed to the U-shaped motif on the brows or foreheads of certain deities and humans (Figure 8), but paired in other contexts as well, such as the objects held by the Young Lord (or Slim) figurine (Justeson 2006).

Table 4

Figure 7

Figure 8

Table 5 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS28, a sign with globular shape with three stubs on the bottom. I propose its identification with Joralemon’s Motif 36 (Paw-wing motif) or 39 (Three-toed Paw); specifically, I regard CS28 (Figures 9a–c) to be a depiction of a mammalian paw with at least three toes. The fact that only three toes are present may be due to stylistic simplification also evident in some iconographic examples (Figure 9d), and not necessarily a taxonomic trait that could lead to the identification of a particular species. This PAW sign can be identified as a simplified version of the paws present on the animal skin worn by the Atlihuayan clay figurine (Figure 9e), and given its occurrence, on two out of its three instances, in close proximity or directly adjacent to CS6 (Figures 9a–b), the ANIMAL.SKIN sign, this paper proposes that the two constitute another iconographic pairing of the sort identified by Justeson (2010). This iconographic pairing pattern also supports the reading format proposed in Mora-Marín (2009): at position 48 one finds the ANIMAL.SKIN sign, unfinished due to the scribe running out of room on the margin, and deciding to continue at position 49 on the next column.

Table 5

Figure 9

The evidence presented in this note, some of it already noted in Mora-Marín (2020, 2019, 2024), is based on an unpublished paper (Mora-Marín 2010) that has been cited in a few works (Anderson 2007; Freidel and Reilly 2010; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015). This evidence further supports the consistency of the Cascajal signary, from a stylistic-iconographic standpoint, with contemporary Olmec art and subsequent Epi-Olmec writing, and offers new insights into some iconographic identifications for such signs, as well as supports for identifications proposed by others. Future installments will provide similar assessments for the remaining signs in the Cascajal signary.

References

The two files below provide the statistical tests (Appendix 1) and dataset (Appendix 2) cited in “Some Observations on the Historical Development of CVC Phonograms in Mayan Writing” (Mora-Marín 2024).

Appendix 1

Appendix 2: Sheet 1-Dataset July 2024

Breves comentarios sobre taʔ=k’in ‘metal’ y sus implicaciones histórico-culturales

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

12/3/2024 (Marzo)

Esta nota trata sobre la difusión del término “metal” en las lenguas mayas y sus implicaciones lingüísticas e histórico-culturales, especialmente en lo relacionado a la supuesta presencia tardía de los huastecos y kabiles/chicomuceltecos en las tierras bajas mayas.

Hace más de tres décadas, Lyle Campbell (1988:211) destacó el caso del término tak’in ‘plata, dinero, metal precioso’ en el huasteco y kabil/chicomucelteco, probablemente un préstamo de una lengua maya de las tierras bajas inicialmente difundida como #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal ( lit. mierda=sol, es decir, mierda-del-sol)’ (Kaufman con Justeson 2003:400). La razón para suponer que los huastecos y kabiles copiaron este término es que un término nativo huasteco exhibiría k’ih en lugar de k’in de pM *q’iiŋ ‘sol, día’, ya que los huastecos experimentaron un cambio de pM *ŋ > h/__# (la velar nasal se convirtió en una fricativa glotal al final de palabras) (Norcliffe 2003:75–76). De hecho, el término para ‘sol, día’ en huasteco (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz) y chicomucelteca es k’ih. Varios autores, entre ellos el mismo Campbell, habían observado previamente estos hechos (ver p.ej. Kaufman 1980, 1985; Justeson et al. 1985; Kaufman y Justeson 2008).

Campbell (1988), sin embargo, también sugirió que este préstamo es evidencia de un contacto tardío, argumentando que la expansión de los artefactos metálicos y la metalurgia fue principalmente un fenómeno posclásico y, por lo tanto, que el préstamo potencialmente respalda una presencia tardía de los huastecos en la región maya. La migración de los hablantes pre-huastecos hacia la Huasteca, por ende, habría ocurrido posterior al préstamo, mientras que los hablantes pre-chicomuceltecos se habrían quedado en la región maya.

Sin embargo, con los objetos metálicos la situación no es tan sencilla. Los objetos metálicos fabricados mediante técnicas metalúrgicas complejas habían llegado a la región maya ya durante el Clásico Temprano (p.ej., una garra de tumbaga de Altun Ha, Belice, principios del siglo VI) y el Clásico Tardío (p.ej., patillas de tumbaga, Copán, Honduras, siglo VIII) (Morley 1946:431-432, Fig. 55c; Pendergast 1970), lo que significa que los mayas de las tierras bajas pudieron haber acuñado el término para ‘metal’ ya en el período Clásico Temprano tardío o en el período Clásico Tardío temprano. [1]

Además, en Mesoamérica se habían empleado técnicas metalúrgicas más simples desde mucho antes: algunos minerales de hierro, como la hematita y la magnetita, se pulían para convertirlos en espejos y probablemente se utilizaban para reflejar la luz del sol, y se conocen por el registro arqueológico que se remonta al período Preclásico Medio (1000–400 AEC). Los mayas, tanto en las tierras altas como en las bajas, pulieron minerales con hierro, en forma de discos o cuadrados de pizarra con soporte de pirita o hematita, como espejos que probablemente reflejaban la luz del sol, entre el Preclásico Medio (ca. 600 AEC) y el Posclásico Tardío (ca. 1521 EC) períodos (p.ej., Healy y Blainey 2011). Esta probable función de reflejo de la luz solar se habría resultado en una asociación obvia entre los objetos de metal pulido y el sol, lo que explica la composición del de esta palabra basada en reflejos *taaʔ ‘excremento; residuo; producto de desecho’, utilizada por los idiomas de las tierras bajas mayas (TB) y pM *q’iiŋ ‘sol; día’.

El hecho de que *taaʔ sea un término maya de las tierras bajas es importante. Kaufman con Justeson (2003:293) reconstruyen dos términos como “mierda”: el proto-Mayense (pM) *tzaaʔ y el término de las tierras bajas mayas #ta(a)ʔ. Este último término, maya de tierras bajas (MTB), se refiere al área de difusión de contacto que involucra a las lenguas ch’olanas y yucatecanas como principales intermediarios culturales, pero que incluye también lenguas vecinas (tzeltalanas, algunas q’anjob’alanas mayores, algunas k’ichee’anos mayores). El término difundido #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ, presente en huastecano (huasteco, chicomuceltec), yucatecano, tzeltalano mayor, así como en al menos tres de las lenguas del q’anjob’alano mayor (tojol ab’al, mocho’, tuzanteko), emplea el término #ta(a )ʔ ‘mierda’, como lo demuestra el hecho de que las lenguas q’anjob’alanas mayores normalmente exhiben reflejos del pM *tzaaʔ como su término nativo para ‘mierda’.

Y, de manera crucial, el hecho de que el término difundido #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ se refleje en tuzanteko (q’anjob’alano mayor) como taaq’iiŋ, con q’, también indica que el término debe haberse difundido antes del cambio de *q’ > k’ que probablemente se propagó regionalmente desde las tierras bajas mayas. Este cambio es muy anterior al período Posclásico, y muy probablemente incluso a las primeras inscripciones mayas legibles y comprehensible, las cuales no contienen evidencia de una distinción entre reflejos de pM *q(‘) y *k(‘), y mucho menos de un cambio en progreso de *q(‘) > k(‘) (ver, p.ej., Justeson y Fox 1989; Kaufman y Norman 1984; Kaufman y Justeson 2007, 2008, 2009; Law et al. 2014; Mora-Marín 2022). Por lo tanto, no hay razón para esperar que los huastecos (ya sean huastecos o kabiles) hubieran tomado prestado este étimo durante el Posclásico.

(Párrafo agregado el 12/03/24) Un breve comentario sobre Pharao Hansen y Helmke (2019) es relevante aquí: esos autores no consideran la tradición mucho más temprana de manufacturar discos reflectores de metal, que se remonta al Preclásico Medio. Algunos de estos minerales, como la pirita, eran de un color similar al oro. También ignoran las implicaciones de la presencia de /q’/ en la forma del tuzanteko para la cronología del préstamo. Y por último, también optan por ignorar la reconstrucción semántica de Kaufman con Justeson (2003) como “metal”, a pesar de la experiencia de muchas décadas de Kaufman en lo que respecta a la reconstrucción lingüística histórica de varias familias lingüísticas dentro y fuera de Mesoamérica.

El étimo difundido #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal’, en consecuencia, podría haber viajado junto con los espejos de mineral de hierro durante siglos antes del comienzo del período Clásico (ca. 200 EC). Los objetos metálicos fueron artículos de comercio a larga distancia por excelencia desde el período Preclásico. Posteriormente, el oro y las aleaciones de oro y cobre comenzaron a llegar a Mesoamérica desde lugares tan lejanos como Costa Rica, Panamá y Colombia, por lo que la amplia difusión de términos para tales objetos no debería sorprender: los hablantes de yokot’an/chontal pueden haber estado en en condiciones de difundir este término tanto en la costa como en el interior. Otros préstamos entre el huasteco y otras lenguas mayas, especialmente términos atestiguados en ch’olano y yucatecano, quienes también tenían acceso a la costa, pueden ser el resultado del comercio costero que conecta a la huasteca con la región maya, y no requieren una suposición de contigüidad geográfica de los asentamientos.

[1] Un término escrito ta-K’IN-ni, posiblemente en referencia al oro o al metal, está de hecho atestiguado para el año 870 EC en el dintel del Akab Dzib en Chichén Itzá (Pharao Hansen y Helmke 2019:118–119 , Fig. 3). Sin embargo, su contexto no está claro y es posible que en realidad quisiera decir tä k’iin ‘en/en/hasta/por (un/el) día’.

Referencias

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The linguistics of Southeast Chiapas (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, 51). Provo: New World Archaeological Foundation.

Healy, P., & Blainey, M. 2011. Ancient Maya Mosaic Mirrors: Function, Symbolism, and Meaning. Ancient Mesoamerica, 22:229–244. doi:10.1017/S0956536111000241

Justeson, John S., and James A. Fox. 1989. Hieroglyphic evidence for the languages of the Lowland Maya. (Unpublished manuscript used with permission of the authors.)

Justeson, John S., William M. Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 53. New Orleans: Tulane University.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1976. Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica.  World Archaeology 8:101–118.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1980. Pre-Columbian borrowing involving Huastec. In American Indian and Indo-European studies: papers in honor of Madison S. Beeler, edited by Kathryn Klar, Margaret Langdon, and Shirley Silver, pp. 101–112. (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 16). The Hague: Mouton.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1985. Aspects of Huastec dialectology and historical phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics51:473–476.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2007. The History of the Word for Cacao in Ancient Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 18:193–237.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2008. The Epi-Olmec Language and its Neighbors. In Philip J. Arnold, III, and Christopher A. Pool (eds.), Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz, pp. 55–83.  Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2009. Historical Linguistics and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20:221–231.

Kaufman, Terrence, with John Justeson. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/index.html.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman.  1984.  An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary.  In Phoneticism in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77-166.  Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9.  Albany: State University of New York.

Law, Danny, John Robertson, Stephen Houston, Marc Zender, and David Stuart. 2014.  Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology. Ancient Mesoamerica 25:357–366.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > ch(’) “Areal Shift” Hypothesis. In Festschrift for Lyle Campbell, edited by Wilson Silva, Nala Lee and Thiago Chacon, pp. 130–163. Edinburgh University Press.

Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946. The Ancient Maya. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Norcliffe, Elizabeth. 2003. The Reconstruction of Proto-Huastecan. MA Thesis in Linguistics, University of Canterbury.

Pendergast, David M. 1970. Tumbaga Object from the Early Classic Period, Found at Altun Ha, British Honduras (Belize). Science 168:116-8.

Pharao Hansen, Magnus, and Christophe Helmke. 2019. Tracing the Introduction of Gold to Mesoamerica Through Linguistic Evidence. Contributions to New World Archaeology 13:113–136.

Brief Comments on taʔ=k’in ‘metal’ and Its Culture Historical Implications

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

3/11/2024

This note deals with the spread of the term for ‘metal’ in Mayan languages, and its historical linguistic and cultural implications, including implications regarding the presence of Huastec and Kabil/Chicomuceltec in the Maya lowlands.

A while back, Lyle Campbell (1988:211) highlighted the case of Huastec and Kabil tak’in ‘silver, money, precious metal’, likely a loan from a Lowland Mayan language initially diffused as #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal (lit. shit=sun, i.e. shit-of-the-sun)’ (Kaufman with Justeson 2003:400). The reason for assuming that Huastec and Kabil borrowed this term is that a native Huastecan term would exhibit k’ih instead of k’in from pM *q’iiŋ ‘sun, day’, for Huastecan experienced a change of pM *ŋ > h/__# (the velar nasal became a glottal fricative word-finally) (Norcliffe 2003:75–76). In fact, the term for ‘sun, day’ in Huastec (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz) and Chicomuceltec is k’ih. Prior authors, Lyle Campbell among them, had observed this already a while ago (cf. Kaufman 1980, 1985; Justeson et al. 1985; Kaufman and Justeson 2008).

Campbell (1988) went on to suggest, though, that this loan is evidence of late contact, arguing that the spread of metal artifacts and metallurgy is mostly a Postclassic phenomenon, and therefore, potentially supportive of a late presence of Huastecan in the Mayan region, after which pre-Huastec speakers migrated north toward the Huasteca, leaving pre-Chicomuceltec speakers behind in the Maya region.

Nonetheless, with regard to metal objects, things are not that simple. Metal objects manufactured through complex metallurgical techniques had been arriving into the Maya region already during the Early Classic (e.g. gold-copper alloy claw from Altun Ha, Belize, early sixth century) and Late Classic (e.g. gold-copper alloy legs, Copan, Honduras, eighth century) periods (Morley 1946:431-432, Fig. 55c; Pendergast 1970), which means that Lowland Mayans may have coined the term for ‘metal’ as early as the late Early Classic period or early Late Classic period.[1]

Moreover, within Mesoamerica, simpler metallurgical techniques had been employed much earlier than that: some iron ores, such as hematite and magnetite, were polished into mirrors and likely used to reflect the sun’s light, and are known from the archaeological record going back to the Middle Preclassic period (1000-400 BCE). Mayans in both the highlands and lowlands manufactured polished iron ores, in the form of pyrite- or hematite-backed slate disks or squares, as mirrors that likely reflected sunlight, between the Middle Preclassic (ca. 600 BCE) and the Late Postclassic (ca. 1521 CE) periods (e.g. Healy and Blainey 2011). This likely sunlight-reflecting function would have become an obvious association between polished metal objects and the sun, accounting for the etymon’s composition based on reflexes of Lowland Mayan *taaʔ ‘excrement; residue; waste product’ and pM *q’iiŋ ‘sun; day’.

The fact that *taaʔ is a Lowland Mayan term is important. Kaufman with Justeson (2003:293) reconstruct two etyma as ‘shit’: pM *tzaaʔ and Lowland Mayan #ta(a)ʔ. The latter term, Lowland Mayan (LL), refers to the contact diffusion area involving the Ch’olan and Yucatecan languages as primary cultural brokers, but including also neighboring languages (Tzeltalan, some Greater Q’anjob’alan, some Greater K’ichee’an). The diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ, present in Huastec, Yucatecan, Greater Tzeltalan, as well as at least three of the Greater Q’anjob’alan languages (Tojolab’al, Mocho, Tuzantek), uses LL #ta(a)ʔ ‘shit’, as evidenced by the fact that the Greater Q’anjob’alan languages exhibit reflexes of pM *tzaaʔ as their native term for ‘shit’.

And crucially, also, the fact that the diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ is reflected in Tuzanteko (Greater Q’anjob’alan) as taaq’iiŋ, with q’, also indicates that the term must have diffused before the shift of *q’ > k’ that was likely spread areally from the LL region. This shift long predates the Postclassic period, and quite likely even the earliest legible and readable Mayan inscriptions, which contain no evidence of a distinction between reflexes of pM *q(‘) and *k(‘), much less of a real-time change of *q(‘) > k(‘) (cf. Justeson and Fox 1989; Kaufman and Norman 1984; Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 2008, 2009; Law et al. 2014; Mora-Marín 2022). Thus, there is no reason to expect that Huastecan (whether Huastec or Kabil) would have borrowed this etymon during the Postclassic.

(Paragraph added on 3/12/24) A brief comment on Pharao Hansen and Helmke (2019) is relevant here: those authors fail to consider the much earlier tradition of fashioning of metal into reflective disks, going back to the Middle Preclassic. Some such ores, like pyrite, were of a similar color as gold. They also ignore the implications of the presence of /q’/ in the Tuzanteko form for the timing of the borrowing. And last, they also choose to ignore the semantic reconstruction by Kaufman with Justeson (2003) as ‘metal’, despite Kaufman’s decades-long expertise in historical linguistic reconstruction of multiple language families from Mesoamerica and elsewhere.

The diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal’, consequently, could have been traveling along with iron-ore mirrors for centuries prior to the beginning of the Classic period ca. CE 200. Metal objects were long-distance trade items par excellence since the Preclassic period. Gold and gold-copper alloys began arriving in Mesoamerica from as far away as Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, and thus the wide-ranging diffusion of terms for such objects should be no surprise: Yokot’an/Chontal speakers may have been in a position to spread this term both along the coast and inland. Other loanwords between Huastecan and other Mayan languages, especially terms attested in Ch’olan and Yucatecan, both of whom had access to the coast, may be the result of coastal trade connecting the Huasteca to the Maya region, and do not require an assumption of geographic contiguity of settlements.

[1] The term, spelled ta-K’IN-ni, possibly in reference to gold or metal, is in fact attested by 870 CE on the lintel of the Akab Dzib at Chichen Itza (Pharao Hansen and Helmke 2019:118–119, Fig. 3). However, its context is not clear, and it is possible that it actually was meant to say tä k’iin ‘on/at/to/by (a/the) day’.

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