There is a particular emphasis here on the prehispanic writing systems found in the codices that survived the conquest and the ravages of time. Further perspective can be gleaned from the historic archives that document the culture clash that gave birth to the new world of the Americas.

Our understanding of the ancestors can be augmented by the study of native traditions & cultures, which can further be facilitated by research in languages & linguistics.

Ancient Writing Frames version of

Ancient Mesoamerican Writing.

Aztec | Borgia Group | Maya | Mixtec

The symbolism, iconography, and writing systems that developed throughout the world are fascinating, but none more so than those that evolved in Mesoamerica. Examples of unique and obscure writing reaching back in time for centuries have been discovered in this part of the world.

The pages on Ancient Writing attempt to survey this evolution. These pages have a special emphasis on the surviving painted books of Mexico, including the mysterious Borgia Group Codices, as well as the Maya Hieroglyphic, Aztec, and Mixtec Pictographic writing systems. These books are written on bark paper or animal skin, using unique writing systems that evolved before the conquest.

There are other documents that don’t particularly qualify as “ancient”, but reflect a mode of communication that was to a great extent lost to time, whose meaning is still being reconstructed. In this context attention will be paid to old manuscripts written in native languages using european characters. These include the Mayan Books of Chilam Balam and Ritual of the Bacabs as well as many documents written in Nahuatl and other native languages.

Maya Ceramics

Revised as of 21 August 1996

The great number of Maya ceramics known today gives us a tantalizing glimpse at the ancient mythological culture of the Maya.

The best book currently available on this topic is Dorie Reent-Budet’s Painting the Maya Universe (which should be sitting on your bookshelf next to Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller’s The Blood of Kings).

This book employs the photography of Justin Kerr who has done an incredible job of recording the known corpus of Maya Ceramics. He invented a method for photographing the vases with a continuous “roll out”, so the entire image can be viewed at once.

Native / Cultural Issues

SNA JTZ’IBAJOM

The House of the Writer / La Casa del Escritor is a cultural cooperative sponsoring a literacy program for Tzotzil-Tzeltal Maya speakers. Teatro Lo’il Maxil (Monkey Business Theatre) who have appeared all over the world. I think you’ll find this interesting.

Archaeological Sites

Palenque | Tonina | Tikal

These sites are in the Maya areas of the Mexican state of Chiapas and the Peten Jungle of Guatemala. They have been excavated and restored by archaeologists, and are generally found in remote, hard to get to locations.

They’re still in a state of disarray, but might be worth a few clicks. The always photogenic Palenque has large graphics and no commentary as yet. Tonina has been cleaned up and includes commentary – Tikal has thumbnails and lets you download the full-size JPG file; the photos don’t approach the scale of the actual experience of this place.

Other Archaeology Links

There are far too many web sites to mention here, so I’ll just touch upon my favorites. The first place I’ll recommend for further Web exploration is the Mesoweb site affiliated with Merle Greene Robertson’s Precolumbian Art Research Institute in San Francisco. PARI supports mesoamerican research and has been the major player in the promotion of the study of Maya hieroglyphs.

Next, Virtual Palenque, a really incredible application of web technology. Dr. Thomas Guderjan can take you there, using the latest in web technology.

I haven’t had time to scan my photos from Uxmal, the first Maya site I’d visited. You might want to check out Nancy McNelly’s Virtual House of the Governor at Uxmal, an exploration of three dimensional space using VRML. Spend some time looking at her interesting pages, and follow her links to the “spoken Mayan” sound files.

The Feathered Serpent Pyramid Home Page is a most

interesting site focusing on Teotihuacan archaeology and

iconography. For real archaeology on the web, check it out.

The Mesoamerican Calendar

In the study of the ancient books, it’s important to get to know the native calendar. Mesoamerica as a culture area is defined by the native use of this calendar, which can be found even among the earliest peoples.

The ancient books represented within these pages were written by the native people of Mexico and Guatemala; including the Mexica and their neighbors in the Valley of Mexico and the surrounding area, the Maya of Guatemala, Chiapas, and the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Mixtec and Zapotec tribes of Oaxaca. They all shared variations of this calendar.

It is a combination of a 260 day Sacred Calendar (twenty repeating day names and thirteen numbers that follow sequentially) and a 365 day annual calendar (divided into 18 periods of 20 days each followed by a special period with only 5 days). These are counted forward in an interlocking cycle. Each day of the year draws one element from the 260 day calendar, and one element from the 365 day calendar. In this way, no individual day name repeats for 52 years.

Another page has links to Mesoamerican Calendar Pages on the Web. You’ll find many other pages to explore to learn more about this.

The above glyph construction (and impossible calendar round) comes to us New World Emporium.

Sites in progress & Other Links

Goddesses in the Borgia Codex Group is now online.

Here’s a couple of other good links of works-in-progress at other sites. A site that’s just come online is Arts and History – Virtual Forum of Mexican Culture. There are several topics in development that should be very interesting, and the graphics are superb. In particular check out the article on Goddesses in the Borgia Codex Group.

the webmaster at Arqueologia Mexicana reports that this site is coming along nicely; check up on their development, and consider ordering a subscription to this publication.

Thomas Bürglin’s list of Mesoamerican and Pre-Colombian related sites is mirrored at another site by Brian Ampolsk and is the primary source of almost all known mesoamerican related links. I’m sure you’ll end up spending a lot of time poking around here; it’s chock full of cool links. (This is the “motherlode” of Mesoamerican links!)

Related Periodicals

Subscriptions to the fine journal Ancient Mesoamerica

can now be found at Cambridge University Press.

Perhaps a good bookseller like Howard Karno Books can help you obtain back issues. Be sure to check out Volume 1, Number 1, which is a special issue on the Mixtec Codices and archaeology.

Don’t miss the Sept-Oct 1997 issue of Archaeology magazine,

featuring special online content on the Search for Site Q.