Earliest Maya Writing Found
Joseph W. Murphy
National Geographic News 1/5/06
EARLIEST MAYA WRITING FOUND IN GUATEMALA, RESEARCHERS SAY
"Evidence of Maya writing that dates to 2,300 years ago has turned up in a
pyramidal structure in Guatemala.
Researchers excavating the site—ruins at San Bartolo in the northeastern
part of the country—say the finding could be among the earliest Maya
written material ever found.
Currently the oldest known writing system in all of Central and South
America dates to about 400 B.C. and is from cultures based in what is now
Oaxaca, Mexico.
But William Saturno, the lead researcher reporting the find, points out
that this "largely depends on what your definition of writing is—that is,
the very first symbols, the first calendric signs, the first full-blown
text, et cetera."
Saturno, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New
Hampshire, and colleagues describe the Maya hieroglyphs in today's Science
Express, the online advance version of the research journal Science. Their
research at the San Bartolo site is partially funded by the National
Geographic Society.
"The story of script invention in Mesoamerica is likely to get more and
more complicated in the near future as more early texts from excavations in
the Maya area come to light," Saturno said.
An Unusual Find
The ruins, which were discovered in 2001, consist of several buildings
constructed at different times. In April 2005 Saturno was working in one
part of the site while his colleague Boris Beltrán, of the University of
San Carlos in Guatemala, worked in another, older section of the
excavation.
"We're in a room built around 100 B.C. working on some murals," Saturno
recalled, "and Boris was in a tunnel far deeper in the pyramid, going back
further in time—about four construction phases earlier than where the
murals are."
Beltrán was working on defining the shapes and dimensions of the entire
structure so he could see how the complex grew over time.
"One day Boris turns up some painting," Saturno said, "and he says, You
should come back here. And I thought, Yeah, sure Boris—it had become a
running joke, because we kept finding fragments of mural everywhere."
"So I walked back into this tunnel, climbed the stairway on the back side
of the building he's been excavating, and I look. And he's there with a big
block with a painting of the [Maya] maize god on it [from] a couple of
hundred years earlier than what we've been looking at.
"And there's this text, just sitting there, and it's clear as day, so
distinct from the glyphs we've seen even at 100 B.C."
The researchers did radiocarbon dating on five charcoal samples from
deposits found in three layers of the site. Samples from the area where the
writing was found dated to approximately 400 to 200 B.C.
Taken together with other radiocarbon dates from the site, the authors have
concluded that the text was written between 300 and 200 B.C.—placing
writing among the Maya much closer to the earliest known writing systems
from other Mesoamerican cultures.
David Stuart, a study co-author, said, "The newly found San Bartolo text is
the earliest example of Maya writing with firm, scientific dating." Stuart
is a professor of Mesoamerican art at the University of Texas at Austin.
"It is also tantalizingly close to the earliest dates we have for writing
in Mesoamerica as a whole, around 400 to 300 B.C. in Oaxaca. The find
simply suggests that the Maya had writing about as early as anyone else in
Mesoamerica."
What Does the Writing Say?
There are ten hieroglyphs on the column, and the writing appears to be the
end of a text that began above it. Whoever wrote the text was very careful:
The scribe first painted a thin pinkish-orange outline before laying on a
thick black line.
The meaning, the authors report, as with all Mayan writing, is difficult to
decipher. There is one character that clearly means "lord" or "ruler" that
probably was part of a phrase referring to a specific person or
mythological character.
Otherwise the writing consists of abstract shapes. While the exact meaning
remains obscure, the scientists believe the text provides a look at the
form Maya writing took in its earliest stages.
What the find means for the history of writing in all of Mesoamerica is not
yet clear, but experts are intrigued.
"Every early find of Maya writing is important, and this is very exciting,"
said Joyce Marcus, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan.
"There will be tremendous interest."
The article and pictures of the glyphs are at this website:
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0105_060105_maya_writing.html>
Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Found this article:
>
> National Geographic News 1/5/06
>
> EARLIEST MAYA WRITING FOUND IN GUATEMALA, RESEARCHERS SAY
> The article and pictures of the glyphs are at this website:
>
> <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0105_060105_maya_writing.html>
The article in *Science* would be (marginally) preferable, since it's by
the discoverers rather than an NGS journalist, but my contact with
access to the online version tells me it hasn't been published in the
print version yet and hence is not available through his institution's
library! (The url was not given in the announcement I saw.)
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@worldnet.att.net>: in sci.lang:
>(The url was not given in the announcement I saw.)
Would it have made a difference to you?
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Sun, 08 Jan 2006 14:52:08 GMT: "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@worldnet.att.net>: in sci.lang:
>
> >(The url was not given in the announcement I saw.)
>
> Would it have made a difference to you?
Yes, since I can ask someone with access to an academic library to
download it for me.
Joseph W. Murphy
The "Science Express" version (alluded to in the article) is at this URL:
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1121745>
It's pretty short so I've reproduced it below in its entirety:
Reports
Submitted on October 24, 2005
Accepted on December 21, 2005
Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala
William A. Saturno 1*, David Stuart 2, Boris Beltrán 3
1 Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
03824, USA.
2 Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin,
TX 78712, USA.
3 Escuela de Historia, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City,
Guatemala.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
William A. Saturno , E-mail: wsat...@unh.edu
The ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala, contain a sample of Maya hieroglyphic
writing dating to the Late Preclassic period (400 BC to 200 AD). The
writing appears on preserved painted walls and plaster fragments buried
within the pyramidal structure known as "Las Pinturas," which was
constructed in discrete phases over several centuries. Samples of
carbonized wood that are closely associated with the writing have
calibrated radiocarbon dates of 200 to 300 BC. This early Maya writing
implies that a developed Maya writing system was in use centuries earlier
than previously thought, approximating a time when we see the earliest
scripts elsewhere in Mesoamerica
Note that Saturno's e-mail address is included should you wish to
communicate with him directly.
Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
Peter T. Daniels
I think "previously known" would be a lot better than "previously
thought." Certainly no one has suggested that we have materials from the
beginning of Maya writing.