434 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
Culturally important contacts are indicated by the borrowing of vocabulary for
cultural complexes. For example, several of the names and numerals used in the rit-
ual calendar of Oaxaca Mixes are Zoquean words, although the Mixe language has
native Mixe terms in noncalendrical vocabulary that correspond in meaning to these
borrowed terms. This indicates that the Oaxaca Mixe calendar was strongly influ-
enced by Zoquean speakers, which further indicates a leading role for Zoqueans in
some aspects of the ritual life of the Mixes. Mixe-Zoquean names for several impor-
tant cultigens are found throughout a large number of Mesoamerican languages;
these and other important loans have been taken as evidence that the Olmecs spoke
Mixe-Zoquean (see Box 11.6 and 11.7 for additional cases of language contact in
pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica).
Archaeological evidence shows that there was a great deal of influence of one cul-
tural group upon another in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica (see Chapter 1), yet, com-
pared with other world areas, overall there has not been a lot of borrowing of
vocabulary from one Mesoamerican language group by another. Almost any amount
of borrowing therefore reflects a serious degree of engagement among the speakers
of these languages.
Three cultural “spheres” show a level of diffusion that was massive by Mesoamer-
ican standards. The single most active diffusion sphere was lowland Mayan civiliza-
tion. Two major branches of the Mayan language family were spoken in this lowland
area during the Late Preclassic and Classic periods: Greater Tzeltalan (consisting of
the Ch’olan and Tzeltalan languages) and Yucatecan. These branches of Mayan are
quite distinct from one another; only Huastec is more distantly related. However,
there are more than 120 words that are shared exclusively by just these two groups
(except that a few were later borrowed into other languages, especially Q’eqchi’), and
at so ancient a time that they are reconstructible for both proto-Yucatecan and proto-
Ch’olan or proto-Greater Tzeltalan. They must have been borrowed by Yucatecans
from Greater Tzeltalans, or vice versa.
Many other words that are widely found in the Mayan family were also borrowed
by one of these branches from the other; for example, Ch’olan *tinäm(or Greater
Tzeltalan *tinam) ‘cotton’ was borrowed into Yucatecan, as were *tu:n“stone; an-
niversary”, *pi:k“8000; skirt”, *ku:tz“turkey”, *mu:ch“toad”, *tep’ “to wrap”, *til“to
untie”, and *tihti“to shake”; proto-Yucatecan *kab’ “earth” and *kan“to learn” were
borrowed into an ancestor of proto-Ch’olan. The best estimate is that about 90 per-
cent of these borrowings were by Yucatecans from Greater Tzeltalans or, later, from
their Ch’olan descendants.
Terrence Kaufman has identified two other major diffusion spheres, which in-
volved Mixe-Zoqueans; see Box 11.7.
Although vocabulary may be the most readily detectible reflection of linguistic
diffusion, it is not the only one. As noted earlier in the discussion of language change
(see also Box 11.6), one language sometimes changes grammatically by copying the
grammatical structures of another. Quite intense levels of interaction must be in-
ferred when this happens. These changes may occur when the source group switches
rapidly to the language of a small target group, normally when the small group was
a militarily successful elite. The source group uses its own grammatical patterns while