The earliest known monument with Zapotec writing is a "Danzante" stone, officially known as Monument 3, found in San José Mogote, Oaxaca. Read in columns from top to bottom, its execution is somewhat cruder than that of the later Classic Maya and this has led epigraphers to believe that the script was also less phonetic than the largely syllabic Maya script. Some signs can be recognized as calendric information but the script as such remains undeciphered. On a few monuments at this archaeological site, archaeologists have found extended text in a glyphic script. Rising in the late Pre-Classic era after the decline of the Olmec civilization, the Zapotecs of present-day Oaxaca built an empire around Monte Albán. Zapotec writing Īnother candidate for earliest writing system in Mesoamerica is the writing system of the Zapotec culture. The two shaded glyphs between his legs are likely his name, Earthquake 1. If the authenticity and date can be verified, this will prove to be the earliest writing yet found in Mesoamerica. This block was discovered by locals in the Olmec heartland and was dated by the archaeologists to approximately 900 BCE based on other debris. In September 2006, a report published in Science magazine announced the discovery of the Cascajal block, a writing-tablet-sized block of serpentine with 62 characters unlike any yet seen in Mesoamerica. This suspicion was reinforced in 2002 by the announcement of the discovery of similar glyphs at San Andres. It was also long thought that many of the glyphs present on Olmec monumental sculpture, such as those on the so-called "Ambassador Monument" (La Venta Monument 13), represented an early Olmec script. The 62 glyphs of the Cascajal block Olmec writing Įarly Olmec ceramics show representations of something that may be codices, suggesting that amatl bark codices, and by extension well-developed writing, existed in Olmec times. In Mesoamerica, writing emerged during the Pre-classic Period, with Zapotec and Maya writing flourishing during the Classic Period. Languages recorded in Mesoamerican writing include Classical Maya, Classical Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, and various other languages, particularly of the Oto-Manguean and Uto-Aztecan families. These surviving texts give anthropologists and historians valuable insight into the origins of Mesoamerican languages, culture, religion, and government. However, some Mesoamerican texts were spared, particularly from the Yucatán of southern Mexico, recording the languages of the area. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.Īfter the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, Spanish colonial authorities and Catholic Church missionaries aimed to purge indigenous culture, religion and traditional institutions, which included the destruction of texts of Mesoamerican and pre-Colombian origin. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. JSTOR ( January 2008) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Mesoamerican writing systems" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
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