could be said that ancient Romans lived in a culture of letter
writing, oft en using daily letters and replies as a way of keep-
ing in touch with friends, loved ones, and business colleagues
throughout the empire.THE AMERICAS
BY MIGUEL ARISA
Th e indigenous languages of the North and South Ameri-
can populations produced a diversity of writing systems, the
most important of which were the hieroglyphic writings that
evolved in the Mesoamerican zone. In the region of modern
Canada and the United States, Native American writing sys-
tems did not develop fully until the advent of the Europeans,
when syllabaries became the norm. Th ese were symbols rep-
resenting syllables, but they did not become widespread until
the 19th century c.e.
Mesoamerican writing is believed to have developed with
religious and political ends in sight. Writing was cunningly
used for political advantage in identifying rulers and deities
and driving the propaganda machine of the powerful. Th e
calendar and a number system may have been the earliest ex-
amples. Bar-and-dot numerals made an early appearance and
spread quickly. With time the ideographic signs became logo-
graphic, representing whole morphemes (collections of speech
sounds) or words; fi nally, by the time of the Spanish conquest,
logophonetic systems had developed, representing speech.
Some of these writing systems date to as early as 1500
b.c.e. At a very early stage in the Formative Period (as early
as 1800 b.c.e.), elaborately carved icons in stone served the
purpose of representing concepts, and they seem to have been
suffi ciently conventionalized to have been understood in a
widespread area. Th is area includes a number of cultures, such
as the Olmec, the Aztec, the Maya, the Zapotec, the Mixtec,
and others whose writing systems evolved in tandem with re-
ciprocal infl uences at diff erent times over a millennium.
Th e major systems of the so-called Late Formative Period,
from 400 b.c.e. to 150 c.e., were the Zapotec, the Epi-Olmec,
and the Mayan. Th e earliest forms of writing were highly
pictorial, and their most important function was to record
dates and the names of government offi cials and rulers. Th e
illustration of myths, liturgical instructions, and mnemonic
devices cannot be ruled out in the more developed stages.
Th e Olmec, a culture that fl ourished in the Gulf not far
from the Yucatán peninsula, are generally considered to have
developed the fi rst system of writing. Hieroglyphs carved in
basalt columns at La Venta have led scholars to conjecture
that they represent the name of a person, since the image of
a bearded man is also present. Notwithstanding, glyphs in a
cylinder seal and on carved greenstone discovered in San An-
drés, an Olmec site in the vicinity of La Venta, have been dated
to about 650 b.c.e. and are now regarded as the earliest arti-
facts refl e c t i ng a s y s tem t hat c ombi ne s pic t u re s a nd g ly ph s a nd
that may represent oral speech patterns. Th e glyphs show lines
coming from the mouth of a bird, in fact rendering the act ofspeaking. One of the symbols is ajaw, which means “king” or
“lord,” and the other is three ajaw, a day in the calendar.
A stone discovered in Veracruz has revealed a new system
heretofore unknown, predating the Olmec but with obvious
references to that neighboring culture. Th e 62 signs inscribed
on a stone slab, called the Cascajal stone, have been dated to
around 900 b.c.e., the earliest yet for such a complex set of
symbols. An insect, an ear of corn (representing perhaps both
deity and ruler), inverted fi sh, and various other pictographs
displayed in repeated patterns show a distinct language sys-
tem whose arrangement seems analogous to sentences. Th ese
signs show patterns that can be deduced to be syntactical
(that is, making up an orderly and connected arrangement
or structure) and whose repetition can even be construed as
representing poetical forms, as in a couplet.
Th e Zapotec seem to have followed the example of the Ol-
mec and developed a system of writing around Monte Albán,
their capital, from 600 to 200 b.c.e. Carved images of danc-
ing men now thought to be captives ready for sacrifi ce appear
next to what some scholars deem is their names; others inter-
pret the images as calendrical signs. Other pictographs found
in tablets in a Late Formative building at Monte Albán have
been considered a record of conquest and the submission of
nearby towns. Not conducive to phonetic writing like the Ma-
yan system, Zapotec inscriptions are more logographic, like
Chinese, in which a symbol represents a word.
Another early form of writing is called the Isthmian
script, a precursor of the Mayan. A stela found at La Mojarra,
near Veracruz, contains 465 glyphs in 21 columns with the
image of a ruler. It is structurally similar to the Mayan be-
cause it is logophonic and uses morphemes for meaning. Ma-
yan writing is thought by some to predate even the Olmec
system. New research from Guatemala on fragments inside
a pyramid at the Mayan site of San Bartolo reveal that one
hieroglyph sign may be an early version of ajaw. Carbon dat-
ing demonstrates that the paintings and the glyph were made
around 300 b.c.e. Th e script next to an image of the maize
god evidences the relationship between writing, kingship,
and religion.
Even though Mesoamerican writing systems had under-
gone a long process of evolution by the time the Spaniards
arrived in the New World, the conqueror’s zeal in eradicating
the cultures they considered heathen resulted in widespread
burning and destruction of their records. Anthropologists,
linguists, and art historians continue to decipher the inscrip-
tions in temples and tombs and the few extant manuscripts
from before and aft er the Conquest.See also adornment; architecture; calendars and
clocks; ceramics and pottery; education; government
organization; inventions; language; literature; mi-
gration and population movements; military; money
and coinage; numbers and counting; occupations; re-
ligion and cosmology; slaves and slavery; social or-
ganization; trade and exchange; war and conquest.1192 writing: The Americas0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1192 1192 10/10/07 2:31:24 PM