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Symbols on the Wall Push Maya Writing Back by Years |
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Written by Xiuhcoatl
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Jan 10, 2006 at 10:15 PM |
Symbols on the Wall Push Maya Writing Back by Years
An ancient column of Maya writing about six inches long.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: January 10, 2006
Click Image to Enlarge
A vertical column of 10 glyphic words, uncovered last year in ruins
in Guatemala, is unreadable even by the most expert scholars, but they
know what it means - that Maya writing is older than they once thought.
Archaeologists reported last week that the script sample, discovered at
San Bartolo, in northeastern Guatemala, is clear evidence that the Maya
were writing more than 2,300 years ago. This is a few centuries earlier
than previous well-dated Maya writing and 600 years before the
civilization's classic period, when a decipherable writing system
became widespread.
Scholars of Maya culture and other pre-Columbian societies said the
discovery deepened the chronology of literacy's origins in the
Americas. But they were not sure whether it brought them any closer to
learning exactly when, where and how early American cultures first put
words into graphic form.
"This early Maya writing," the discovery team concluded in the current
issue of the journal Science, "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."
William A. Saturno, the team leader who is a Maya archaeologist at the
University of New Hampshire and Harvard, said the study of the origins
of writing in Mesoamerica, the ancient region of Mexico and parts of
Central America, was now "likely to get more complicated in the near
future as more early texts come to light."
Joyce Marcus, a professor at the University of Michigan and an
authority on Mesoamerican cultures, said the Maya discovery "is
terrific and does constitute some of the earliest Maya writing."
"Every piece of early writing enriches our knowledge of the ancient Maya," Dr. Marcus said.
As matters stand, the Zapotec, who lived around Oaxaca, Mexico, appear
to have led the way to literacy, at least by 400 B.C., perhaps as early
as 600 B.C. Clear evidence for Maya writing has been more recent.
A few scholars contend that the Olmec, living along the Gulf of Mexico near Veracruz, developed a script even earlier.
Some of the confusion stems from differing definitions of writing,
whether a few symbols strung together suffice or fuller texts are
required.
But it is generally agreed that the primal writing by contemporary
groups in Mesoamerica was one of just four scripts - Sumerian, Egyptian
and Chinese are the others - to be invented independent of outside
influences.
What may be the earliest Maya words turned up in the same ruins where
the same archaeologists reported last month finding a richly colored
mural depicting the culture's mythology of creation and kingship. The
mural is one of the earliest examples of Maya art, dated about 100 B.C.
Boris Beltrán, an archaeologist at the University of San Carlos in
Guatemala, was exploring deeper in the ruins of a pyramid, down several
layers of debris and time below the mural chamber. There he came on the
Maya glyphs painted in black on white plaster.
A scribe apparently drew the characters along a subtle pinkish-orange stripe as a guideline.
Radiocarbon analysis of charcoal associated with the inscription dated
the written words to as early as 300 B.C. The column, Dr. Saturno said,
was presumably part of a text associated with a nearby work of art that
included a painted image of the maize god.
The style of the painting was distinct from later Maya art, and the
glyphs were more archaic and abstract than later Maya writing.
This has been frustrating for David Stuart, a professor of Mesoamerican
art and writing at the University of Texas, a member of the discovery
team.
Dr. Stuart said the glyphs had distinctive Maya characteristics and
were "the earliest firmly dated Maya writing." But he and others were
able to decipher just one symbol, the one meaning "ruler" or "lord" or
possibly anyone of noble status.
"It's the same script," Dr. Stuart said. "But it was written several
centuries before the full Maya script that we can read. It makes it
tough. I don't think we will be able to read this anytime soon."
The exact meaning of the other nine glyphs will probably remain
obscure, he said, until additional and longer texts are found from the
same time in Maya history. Then there may be enough specimens, he
continued, to compare with later decipherable glyphs and "make some
tentative connections with things we are familiar with."
The discovery at San Bartolo is expected to inspire archaeologists to
search for other examples of Mesoamerican writing from this period or
earlier. Previous ideas about the relationships of Olmec, Zapotec and
Maya writing are giving way to new thinking.
"Now it is looking like a lot of Mesoamerican cultures came up with
writing at about the same period," Dr. Stuart said. "They all were in
contact with each other, building cities, trading, telling their
history and ideology through script and art."
Dr. Marcus cited recent excavations that produced monuments with
Zapotec writing as early as 600 B.C., and even though the Mesoamerican
cultures were in frequent contact with one another, she pointed out the
individuality of their writing systems.
"What is of great interest," she said, "is that Zapotec writing is
distinctive and Maya writing is distinctive, and each has its own
genesis."
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Archaeology 