Mesoamerican Writing

Intervals of 260 days are recorded by architectural orientations at a number of Maya sites, a pattern that may have developed early at sites such as Nakbe. The 260-day calendar, emphasizing sets of 13 and 20 days, dates back to the Middle Preclassic, when early E-Groups in the Maya area were used for solar observations. These observations were probably linked with a maize cycle spanning 260 days. By the end of the Late Preclassic, however, most E-Groups were abandoned or modified for a different function, serving as a stage for rituals performed by rulers at a time when the Long Count calendar was being developed. The changing role of E-Groups relates to the rise of royal rituals associated with the detailed historical records documented in Maya Long Count inscriptions.
En varios sitios en el área maya se registran, a partir de las orientaciones arquitectónicas, intervalos de 260 días. Este patrón pudo haberse desarrollado de forma temprana en sitios como Nakbe, Petén, Guatemala. El calendario de 260 días, que enfatiza los conjuntos de 13 y 20 días, data del preclásico medio, cuando se utilizaron los primeros grupos conmemorativos en el área maya para realizar observaciones solares. Estas observaciones probablemente estuvieron vinculadas con un ciclo del maíz que dura 260 días. Sin embargo, a finales del preclásico tardío, la mayoría de los grupos conmemorativos fueron abandonados o modificados para servir una función diferente. Estos grupos fueron utilizados como escenarios para rituales llevados a cabo por la realeza en el periodo durante el cual se desarrolló el calendario de cuenta larga. El nuevo papel de los grupos conmemorativos se relaciona con el aumento de los rituales reales. Estos mismos son asociados con los detallados registros históricos documentados en inscripciones mayas que usan fechas de cuenta larga.

One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. This article is an excerpt of pages 98-99 from the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson with a numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depicting the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Mural photograph: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Los murales de Teotihuacan constituyen un lenguaje plástico cuyo contenido genera multiples lecturas, muchas de ellas aún no descifradas para nosotros. La pintura de la ciudad describe acontecimientos, relatos, pasajes históricos o hechos míticos. Escenas y diseños encuentran sus claves profundas en la combinación de colores, el tipo de emblema y el espacio donde se encuentran situados.

The Grolier Codex is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

This handbook is an educational resource designed for the Department of Education of the National Gallery of Victoria. It intends to facilitate the teaching and understanding of the NGV collection of Mesoamerican art. It comprises the main Mesoamerican socio-cultural topics depicted in the artworks of this collection. In addition, it recommends optional sources of information as a complement to this manual.

PhD dissertation (Leiden University): interpretive study of the precolonial Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus 1 (Codex Yuta Tnoho), dealing with the origin of Mixtec dynasties.
Apéndices: (1) Fray Gergorio García’s text on the origin of the Mixtec world, (2) Colonial documents on indigenous healing in Chalcatongo, (3) Resettlement of Chalcatongo in the colonial period, (4) Legends from Apoala told by don Macario López, (5) Customs of Apoala told by doña Otilia Alavarado.
Detailed endnotes to the book. Accompanying illustrations. Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus 1 in line drawings.
See for the individual chapters also: http://www.cedla.uva.nl/50_publications/archive_CLAS.html

In this article, see pages 164, 166-168 for Stuart's discussion of the Grolier Codex.  It is highly significant that the Mexican State of Chiapas and the Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas chose to include the Grolier Codex as an authentic ancient Maya book in 1985 and make a fine color facsimile available along with the Dresden, Paris, and Madrid codices for further research. 

This review and essay of "Los Codices Mayas" is being posted as a personal tribute to my friend and colleague, the late George E. Stuart, Ph.D. (1935 - 2014) for his great generosity and many extraordinary contributions promoting world archaeology over several generations.

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

Available on Amazon.com  - see link in listing. Ships internationally from the USA.

Underlying Maya cosmology, history and religion are several key mythological narratives explaining the origins of the world, and providing sacred charters for civilized/moral behavior. Key elements from these narratives—including shared mythemes, characters, and toponyms—have long been known to recur in various regions of Southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, in the oral traditions of several groups speaking distinct but related Mayan languages. One such is a widespread narrative concerning an aged god of the mountains whose daughter, granddaughter, or wife runs away with a young culture hero: a parable often echoing acute concerns about female marital fidelity in contemporary christianized Maya communities. Naturally enough, the contexts of these modern myths have occasioned some concern that they may be little more than thinly disguised retellings of Biblical stories of unfaithful wives, such as Hosea and Gomer. Yet several Late Classic Maya vases and monuments from the late 7th and early 8th century AD apparently reference episodes from this same narrative, here explicitly involving Huk Xib (later Huk Siip), the aged Lord of the Deer, whose wife is spirited away by Juun Ixiim, the youthful Maize God, in a union which may have produced the famed Hero Twins. Epigraphic and iconographic analysis of the texts and imagery reflecting this lost myth, coupled with cautious comparison with potentially related modern Maya myths, allow us to reconstruct many of the basic events of this ancient tale, although several mysteries remain. Such continuity reminds us that myths can be surprisingly durable, even in the wake of military conquest and centuries of colonial rule and religious conversion. Nonetheless, still unresolved is the extent to which these various early fragments allow the confident reconstruct of a single, underlying myth. It is suggested that various regional and temporal variants may find expression or emphasis in these texts, raising questions about many of our reconstructions of ancient mythic narratives.

Writing!  Few human inventions are as pervasive and central to the modern world.  Each and every day, we read thousands of words—whether in traditional formats like books, magazines, or newspapers, or on the increasingly common computers, smartphones, ebooks, and tablets.  But even though writing seems thoroughly modern, it can be traced back more than 5,000 years to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

This lecture series and illustrated guidebook begins with a thorough consideration of what writing actually is, and precisely how it differs from other kinds of graphic communication systems, like pictography, rebus, and numerical notation.  Writing always records language, and it does so in surprisingly similar ways in all writing systems, whether ancient or modern.  In this sense, the way humans wrote millennia ago is not radically different from how we write today.  The lectures then turn to an exploration of the origins and development of writing, tracing the birth of our own alphabet, and its connections to the early Germanic Runes.  They also explore the independent invention of writing in China, and its adoption and elaboration in Japan.  In order to more deeply examine the subject of writing, the theory and practice of decipherment is explored.  Not all writing systems can be deciphered, so what are the limitations?  And how can they be overcome?  Several case studies put decipherment to the test, including Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (Champollion), Old Persian cuneiform (Grotefend), Mycenaean Linear B (Ventris), Mayan hieroglyphs (Knorosov) and Aztec hieroglyphs (Aubin and Lacadena).  Topics explored along the way include: the reasons behind the difficult and still incomplete decipherments of Etruscan and Meroïtic; the urge that numerous invididuals have had to reform writing, or to invent a more ‘perfect’ writing system; and an assessment of Darius the Great's claim that he himself invented the Old Persian (Achaemenid) syllabary.

In comparing the world's writing systems we slip the shackles of parochialism, recognizing that our alphabet is but one of many similar writing systems, all of which capably serve the needs of their users.  Writing is deeply conservative and resistant to change.  It is frequently adapted and altered during borrowing, but a culture rarely abandons or radically modifies its own extant writing system except in the most dire instances of cultural transformation.  An equally important topic is the deeply interdependent relationship of writing and civilization, including the social, political, and economic forces that led to the adoption of new media and technology for writing.  These forces not only shaped the form, function, and distribution of writing, but through it they have transformed civilization itself.  In the concluding lecture, all that has been discussed about the interplay between writing and civilization is used to predict one possible future of writing.

In 'Time and the Ancestors: Aztec and Mixtec Ritual Art', Maarten Jansen and Aurora Pérez present new interpretations of enigmatic masterpieces from ancient Mexico. Combining iconographical analysis with the study of archaeological contexts, historical sources and living cultural traditions, they shed light on central symbols and values of the religious heritage of indigenous peoples, paying special attention to precolonial perceptions of time and the importance of ancestor worship. They decipher the meaning of the treasure deposited in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán (Oaxaca) and of artworks such as the Roll of the New Fire (Selden Roll), the Aztec religious sculptures and, last but not least, the mysterious chapter of temple scenes from the Book of Night and Wind (Codex Borgia).
[ For high quality open access of each chapter > https://brill.com/view/title/34471 ]

El siguiente articulo analiza iconográficamente el contenido del Lienzo de Analco, un manuscrito histórico-cartográfico producido por los aliados indígenas de los conquistadores de la sierra Norte de Oaxaca. Narra la historia multifacética de la conquista de la sierra durante un trascurso de al menos cinco décadas, partiendo de la entrada dual de Figueroa y Barrios, en 1526. Ilustra un panorama detallado de las condiciones históricas y sociales de la región, sirviendo de documento unificador y mérito de servicio para los indígenas que, de otro modo, se encontraron privados de derechos y enajenados por la autoridad colonial.

Ancient people used architectural space to track the movement of heavenly astronomical bodies and, in the process, create hierophanies. In particular, where and when is visual information dramatized by the hierophantic play of light and shadow on Maya buildings? A famous example can be seen at the Castillo pyramid at Chichén Itzá, where the sun illuminates a north serpent balustrade on March 20–21, the spring equinox, and on September 21–22, the fall equinox. The building may have been built to commemorate the close of the tenth baktun, 7 Ahaw 18 Sip, on March 13, A.D. 830 in our Gregorian calendar (Coggins 1987, 427; Krupp 1997, 267; Stuart 2011, 242). This baktun ending fell a week before the spring equinox. The range of events displayed in the context of architectural space, such as solstice sunrise and sunset or solar zenith and nadir passages in Group E–type complexes, will be discussed to show how and why agents, architects, or audiences observed and celebrated solar movements in urban planning.

Codex Bodley (Codex Ñuu Tnoo - Ndisi Nuu) is a precolonial Mexican pictorial manuscript, stemming from the Mixtec region (Ñuu Dzaui). It tells the history and genealogy of the rulers of the Mixtec city-states Tilantongo (Ñuu Tnoo) and Tlaxiaco (Ndisi Nuu) during the five centuries before the Spanish conquest (1521).
This book contains a general introduction to ancient Mixtec pictography, which discusses the history of the manuscript, its cultural-historical context and indicates how to read the manuscript, as well as a full page-by-page reading of both the obverse part of the codex (dealing with the dynasty of Tilantongo) and of the reverse part of the codex (dealing with the dynasty of Tlaxiaco).

""Талах В. Н., Куприенко С. А. (редакторы).

Америка первоначальная. Источники по истории майя, науа (астеков) и инков / Ред. В. Н. Талах, С. А. Куприенко. — Киев : Видавець Купрієнко С. А., 2013. — 370 с. : ил.

ISBN 978-617-7085-00-2



В сборник «Америка первоначальная» включены тексты, освещающие историю трех народов, создавших наиболее яркие и впечатляющие цивилизации Доколумбовой Америки – майя, науа (астеков) и инков. Хронологический диапазон представленных в сборнике текстов охватывает время с середины VII в. (надписи майя из Паленке и Эль-Тортугеро) до середины XVII века (сочинения Д. де Когольюдо и Ф. де Монтесиноса). Читателю предоставляется возможность непосредственно ознакомиться с такими ранее не переводившимися на русский язык важнейшими источниками по истории индейских обществ как «Летопись какчикелей», исторические части «Кодекса Мендоса» и «Кодекса Теллериано-Ременсис», «Сообщение кипукамайоков».""

The work is one of the final drafts of a study about the Nahua system of writing employed in the Codex Xolotl and published as Chapter 13 the homage to Karen Dakin. Chapter 13 compares the Nahuatl of the folio that Thouvenot classified as X.010 to posit that a portion of this segment was included in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Historia de la Nación Chichimeca. It also argues that this folio contains two Nahuatl graphemes: a logogram standing for polihui and a new phonogram for Tollan.

More than four decades ago H.B. Nicholson compared the so-called Palace Stone from Xochicalco to a page in a Mesoamerican codex. Showing numerous calendrical dates and toponymic signs connected by a path marked by footprints the monument readily recalls the cartographic tradition that is well-known for the central Mexican highlands at the time of the Spanish conquest. In this paper we explore the Epiclassic evidence of this tradition, discussing not only central features of the Palace Stone, but also additional monuments from Xochicalco and sites in the vicinity, such as the recently discovered Tetlama stela, that belong to the same genre. Thus, we provide a preliminary analysis of the formal features and contents of these fascinating monuments that record an important narrative history and founding myth of Xochicalco and some of its satellite communities. Furthermore, we shall also introduce evidence that suggests that the conventions of this tradition can ultimately be traced back to Teotihuacan in the Early Classic.