The Oldest Maya text

While digging through the remains of an ancient pyramid called Las Pinturas in San Bartolo, Guatemala, a graduate student, Boris Beltr?n, has discovered a piece from a Maya text, written on a boulder-size chunk of plaster. Apparently the Maya had written the text for the third version of the Las Pinturas pyramid - they used to build the newer versions on top of the remains of older versions.

The leader of the team, William Saturno from New Hampshire University remembers: "When he showed it to me, I asked him: 'Do you know what you have there? That is likely the earliest text in the Maya era. It is likely among the earliest texts in the New World as a whole.'"

Unfortunately, the archaeologists have found so far only one fragment of text. The images that probably accompanied the text are also lost, which makes the task of interpreting the text more difficult. One of the hieroglyphs, denoting the word "leader", is clearly visible. "Most likely it's part of a title referring to some person, mythic or real, we don't know", explained Saturno.

The radiocarbon analysis of burnt wood bits found in the plaster and from surrounding strata has shown that they date from around 300-200 B.C. thus confirming it is one of the oldest Maya text ever found. The fact that Maya appear to have had a well developed writing system has inspired some archaeologists to speculate that maybe, in spite of certain stylistic differences, they have inherited their writing from more distant cultures, such as the Zapotec.

For interpreting the text the archaeologists have to find other similar texts. Saturno hopes that additional mural texts will be found. "The more of it we find, the more likely we are to recognize the patterns and make connections with later texts to be able to trace things back and forth."

Image Credits: D. Stuart