Reviewing Kaufman’s evidence for Mixe-Zoque, Wastekan and Totonakan borrowings in proto-Nahuan

In a 2001 paper, distributed on the internet through the website of the Project for theDocumentation of Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA) the eminent linguist and expert in Mesoamerican languages Terrence Kaufman analyzed the prehistory of Nahuan languages. He focused specifically on showing how influence from the languages of the Mesoamerican Language Area participated in shaping the Southern Uto-Aztecan dialect proto-Nahuan into the Mesoamerican language Nahuatl. The data used for the paper is very impressive, his conclusions well argued, and Kaufman’s writing style is as always very authoritative, and so the paper has been cited quite a few times (30 citations in google scholar).

In this post, I will take issue with some of the conclusions in Kaufman’s paper, specifically I will show that Kaufman significantly overstates his evidence for substantial lexical influence from Mesoamerican languages on proto-Nahuan, because he does not adequately take into account alternative, potential or probable etymologies from Uto-Aztcan sources. I show that most of his proposed borrowings into proto-Nahuan are in fact equally (or more) likely to have Uto-Aztecan etymologies, either from proto-Uto-Aztecan, from proto-Corachol-Nahuan or can be plausibly analyzed as originating as combinations of Nahuan roots.

My conclusion is that there are much fewer borrowings from Mixe-Zoquean, Wastekan and Totonakan in proto-Nahuan than often thought, and that we therefore cannot use this contact as evidence that proto-Nahuatl was spoken in the area of north-eastern Mesoamerica where Kaufman locates the speech community. Rather we should locate the proto-Nahuan speech community on the north-western periphery of Mesoamerica in close contact with Corachol and with Oto-Pamean languages. 

Proposed loans from Mixe-Zoque in all Nahuan

Word	Nahuan	Kaufman’s source	Potential UA etymology
Cacao	kakawa	*kakawa	PUA *kawa “shell”
Footwear	kakƛi	PZ *kɨ’ak	PCN *kakai
Head	kopak-ƛi -kwa ikpak	PMZ *kopak “head”	*PUA *kupa “top of head/hair”
Break	pos-teki	PMi *pus	Huichol *purusi “stub, cut short”<PCN *puyusi “stub”
Mat	peƛaƛ	PZo *pata’	PCN *pɨta
Old man /Sorcerer/shape-shifter	nawal	PMZ *na’w	PCN *nawari “thief”   *nawa “steal”
Ant	¢ikatl	PMZ *(hah)-¢uku	-
Turkey	totolin	PMZ *tu’nuk	Corachol *tutuvi “large parrot”, Nahua toto “bird”
Adobe	šamitl	PMZ *sam “heat”	PCN *sia “sand/clay” + mi “collective plural”
Enter-house	kal-aki	PMZ calque of *tɨ’k-ɨy “house enter”	-

Kaufman proposes 9 borrowings and a lexical calque from proto-Mixe-Zoque, proto-Zoque or proto-Mixe into proto-Nahuan. Of these borrowings, 7 have equally probable Uto-Aztecan etymologies, and 5 have definite cognates in Corachol, suggesting that if they are borrowings and not inherited then the borrowing would have been between proto-Mixe and proto-Corachol-Nahuan. The calque seems likely, and the word for ant seems possible. Also, I actually think the word for cacao is a likely borrowing from Mixe-Zoque, since the alternative “shell” etymology proposed by Dakin and Wichmann is somewhat weak, and given the fact that it is extremely unlikely that proto-Nahua was spoken by people who lived in a cacao-producing region whereas proto-Mixe-Zoque almost certainly was.  Nevertheless, the claim of Mixe-Zoque contact with proto-Nahuan seems to lack real support once the alternative etymologies are examined.  This is particularly significant because the words proposed as borrowings are highly culturally significant suggesting that Mixe-Zoque speakers had a profound culturalizing influence on proto-Nahua speakers, teaching them to use foot-wear, live in adobe houses with cultivated liverstock such as turkeys, and to use the culturally salient luxury good cacao, and that through them the Nahuas adopted the pan-Mesoamerican belief in shapeshifting sorcerers. With these borrowings, the role of Mixe-Zoque in this regard seems much less significant. Kaufman has been a major proponent of seeing Mixe-Zoque speaking Olmecs as the drivers of the development of the Mesoamerican cultural area, and they probably were – but it does not seem to me that there was any significant contact between Mixe-Zoque speakers and the proto-Nahuan speech community. This probably means that the Nahuas entered Mesoamerica after the decline of Olmec civilization in the centuries before the beginning of the first millennium.

Proposed loans from Wastekan in all Nahuan

Word	Nahuatl	Kaufman’s proposal	Potential UA etymology
Deer-foot	čočolli	čočob	-
Pulque	okƛi	book	-
Sp. of Parrot	kočotl	kuču’	-
Breadnut	ohošihtli	ohoš	Nahua oši-ƛ “sticky dirt”
Striated/layered	nete:č	net’eč/nit’ič	Nahua ne:-te:č “reciprocal-together”

Kaufman proposes 5 loans from Wastek Maya into proto-Nahuan. Of these only pulque, and deer-foot seem likely loans. Kochotl is not a general Nahuan word, and there is no reason to reconstruct it for proto-Nahuan – likely be an exclusive eastern or Huasteca Nahua loan. Netech is morphologically analyzable as ne-te:ch. Ohoxihtli seems a likely reduplicated form of oxitl “dirt that comes of when you wash”. Nahuas in fact associated the origin of pulque with the Huastecs, so it seems likely that this is indeed a likely loan. In conclusion, there may have been contact between proto-Nahuan and Wastekan, but if there was it was quite limited – the only likely loan is the word for pulque, and in fact not all Nahuan varieties have this root, as many use the inherited word for “honey” nekwƛi instead.

Proposed loans from Totonac in all Nahuan

Word	Nahuatl	Kaufman’s Totonac source	Alternative source
Cottonwood	pocho-ƛ	puučuut	PUA (Stubbs, 2011, #557)
Honorific/diminutive	-¢in diminutive	-¢iin	Otomi-Mazahua či- Corachol ¢i-/-ši (š is a regular cognate of Nahuan ¢ in Corachol)
jonote	šono-ƛ	šuunuk	-
tadpole	šolo-ƛ	šuuɬʰ	Corachol *siuri “tadpole” regularly becomes Nahuan *šoli-.
Cage/crate	wahkal-ƛi	wahkat	Nahua: wa(k/h)-kal-ƛi “drying house”.
dog	čiči	čiči’	Corachol ¢ɨ¢ɨ
Sp. Of fish	wapo-ƛ	waapa “tilapia”	-
Brother in law	tex-ƛi	tiiš	-
Older sister	pih-ƛi	pi:pi’	-pi “sister” (not younger)
Grass	saka-ƛ	saqa	SUA *saka “grass”, Hopi tïïsaqa ”grass”, NUA *saka “willow” (Stubbs 2011 #1055)
Plate/flat bowl	kašiƛ	qa’š	-
Wild avocado	pawa-ƛ	ɬʰpaw	Avocado is yewka in Coracholan suggesting an origin as proto-Cora-Nahuan *pewaka.
Sour	šoko	šku’ta	Proto-Corachol-Nahuan *siwi “sour/bitter”. *iw becomes Nahua o, but the question is where the -ko element then comes from.
Hawk	čoneh	čuu’ni’	-
Phoneme	-ƛ	Totonac *ƛ	-

Kaufman’s 14 proposed loans from Totonac fare a little better when checked for plausible alternative etymologies. The forms šolotl, wahkalli, chichi, pihtli, pawatl have viable UA etymologies. Šolotl and chichi are shared with Corachol. The diminutive -tzin could be borrowed from Totonac, but Otomi-Mazahua has a diminutive/honorific prefix či- and Coracholan has a diminutive prefix ¢i- and a honorific suffix -ši.  The Totonac form does match the Nahua form better than either of those sources. In any case there is basis for considering the -¢i diminutive morpheme to be an areal trait since it is shared between Mesoamerican languages of three different linguistic families (Totonakan, Oto-Pamean and Uto-Aztecan).

The words pochotl and xonotl, describe species with restricted distribution that likely arose as local borrowings in the Nahuatl varieties spoken where these species are found and only subsequently spread through inter-Nahua contact – I would not reconstruct these words to proto-Nahuan. Wapotl and čone are not found in all (or most?) Nahuan dialects, but are local (recent) borrowings.

That leaves the words for plate, brother in-law, tilapia and xonote, as well as the phoneme ƛ, as likely borrowings from Totonacan into proto-Nahuan. 

Conclusion:

Out of 29 proposed borrowings, only 9 seem more likely to have been borrowed, than to have been inherited. So, having reviewed the evidence of borrowings from Mixe-Zoquean, Totonac and Wastekan, I must conclude that the extent of lexical borrowings from Mesoamerican languages into proto-Nahuan is greatly overstated by Kaufman.

Kaufman also shows a long list of borrowings from Wasteko into Huastecan Nahuatl – the Nahuatl variety that we know has been spoken in close contact with Wastekan Maya for centuries. Here, most of the proposed borrowings seem completely plausible, but a couple to me suggest the direction of borrowing to be the opposite of what is assumed by Kaufman.

For example the Wastekan word kw’itš’a “grind in mortar” which Kaufman proposes as the source of Huastecan Nahua tekwicha “pestle” seems likely to be related to the Nahuan word for grinding kwečoa “to grind” from PN kwe¢iwa, and related to Huichol rakwi¢i “nixtamal”, Cora kwei¢i “dough” – suggesting a loan from Nahuan into Wasteko.

The Wastek word molik “elbow” is suggestive, but it is not restricted to Huastecan Nahuatl as Kaufman implies, it is found also in western Nahua branch (and as molic in Molina’s dictionary). This suggests either borrowing into Wastek from Nahuan or an additional example of Wastek contact with PN. Given the otherwise unconvincing evidence for Wastek/proto-Nahuan contact, it is probably best to see the default hypothesis as a loan from Nahuan into Wastek. The proposed borrowing of Wastek či’im “maguey juice” as čiimiƛ “mothers milk” in Wastek Nahuan is unlikely, since Cora has ¢i’imé “mothers milk” suggesting again borrowing in the opposite direction.

 In the paper itself, Kaufman states that Mesoamerican languages are seemingly reluctant to borrow and that therefor any situation in which a language is permeated by borrowings shows very intense contact. I think the review of the paper suggests that proto-Nahuan was not permeated with borrowings from Wastekan, Totonakan and Mixe-Zoquean.

References Cited: 

*Dakin, K., & Wichmann, S. (2000). Cacao and chocolate. Ancient Mesoamerica, 11(1), 55-75.

*Kaufman, T. (2001). The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results. Paper posted online at http://www. albany. edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa. pdf. University of Pittsburgh.

The Aztecs did not need a leap year: Introducing the Nuttall-Ochoa model for the Aztec Calendar

This blogpost is inspired by a recent blogpost by Itztli Ehecatl at Calmecac Anahuac, in which he lays out the different calendar correlations between the Aztec/Mexica calendar and the gregorian one, and in which he argues in favor of the correlation recently made by Rubén Ochoa. I agree that Ochoa’s correlation is the best available, and in this blogpost, I describe why that is – recycling some of the arguments from Itztli Ehecatl’s blogpost and adding others.

Depiction of the Celebration of the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli
during the Spring Equinox in the Codex Borgia (folio 34)

 A recurring question in the study of Aztec calendrics has been whether the Aztec calendar did or did not correct for leap years. Generally the question has been answered in the negative (see e.g. Sprajc 2000). Archaeoastronomer and expert in Mesoamerican calendars Anthony Aveni (2016:110), in his recent chapter on calendars in the  Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, concludes that “there is little evidence that the Aztecs employed a leap-year correction”, but that the question is open.
Rather, I think the question is wrongly posed - who says the Aztec calendar even needed a leap year correction the first place?

The basic problem is that there is little explicit evidence that the Aztecs used an intercalary leap year in their xiuhpohualli solar year count, but also it seems that the monthly feasts, many of which were related to an agricultural cycle and themes were usually celebrated at the appropriate time of year for a given agricultural event. This poses a basic question of how to reconcile the idea of calendric agricultural rituals with a calendar count that cannot be fixed in relation to the tropical year.

But as I see it the question can be resolved quite simply by recognizing, as several scholars have, that the beginning of the Aztec year was fixed by the vernal equinox and that the nemontemi are simply the days between the end of the 360-day cycle and the beginning of the next. This would make the question of leap year moot for the Aztec calendar since the equinox/new year would automatically fix the calendar to the tropical year every year, and the need to have an explicit principle for intercalating days or months due to the increasing disjuncture between the astronomical and calendric year would never arise.

Currently, none of the most widely accepted correlations between the Aztec calendar and the Gregorian adopt this solution to the leap year problem. But the solution emerges naturally from the argument that the vernal equinox marked the beginning of the Aztec year.

Today, the most scholars use one of two correlations – Caso’s or Tena’s.  Alfonso Caso’s correlation does not correct for the bissextile year and so does not begin on a specific day relative to the Gregorian calendar, it would result in the Aztec year starting on a different day each year with the monthly ceremonies gradually changing their position relative to the tropical year.  Rafael Tena’s model, in turn, does correct for leap year, but he argues the year begins on February 26^th with the veintena of Atlcahualo. 

Oddly, as noted by Itztli Ehecatl, neither Caso nor Tena cites Nuttall’s 1894 paper or her 1904 article in American Anthropologist in response to Eduard Seler. The argument against the intercalation of an extra day to correct for leap year is that some scholars find that it disrupts the ongoing count of the other calendrical cycles – the 260 day tonalpohualli and the lunar and venus counts. The argument for an intercalary day has mostly been the seemingly correct correspondence with sowing and fertility rituals in the spring months and the harvest rituals in the fall. Some scholars (e.g. Graulich 2002) have argued that the agricultural associations of the monthly feasts were so vague that they didn't really require being performed at a specific time of year (which is debatable), and that farmers don't need a calendar to tell them when to sow and harvest (which is right). 

Nuttall was the first to propose the equinox as marking the end and beginning of the Aztec solar year. Her proposal however has been echoed also by Lopez Luján (2005), who argues, based on the astronomical alignment of the Templo Mayor, and in accordance with Nuttall, that Tlacaxipehualiztli was the first 20-day month of the Aztec year and that its beginning was fixed by the equinox. 

Recently, Rubén Ochoa has verified that Nuttall’s correlation is consistent with the evidence from prehispanic calendric codices, and that the length of the nemontemi must have varied so as to gradually adjust to the tropical year. He notes that the addition of a day is evident in the relation between the two most securely dated events in Aztec history:  the arrival of Cortés in Tenochtitlan on November 8^th 1519 (2 quecholli/8 ehecatl) and the fall of Tenochtitlan on August 13th 1521 (15 miccailhuitontli/1 coatl). He notes that counting from the first date to the second requires at least one intercalary day, which he supposes would have extended the nemontemi of one of the two interceding years with one day from 5 to 6 days.  The explanation of Ochoa’s model and the evidence from the codices can be found here and the evidence showing how the model works for the known dates around 1519-1521 is found here.

Nuttall however, followed the colonial chronicler De La Serna in believing that there was a 13-day intercalary trecena every 52 years, when the New Fire ceremony was celebrated. But as noted by Hassig, this would have had the effect of throwing the correlation between the agricultural year and the calendric year off so much that it would be impractical as an agricultural calendar. Hassig proposes that rather than resetting directly to the astronomical year, the New Fire Ceremony reset the year to 7 days earlier than the exact match, which would mean that the total variance between the agricultural year and the calendar would vary over the 52-year period, but without becoming greater than about 7 days which is agriculturally tolerable. The main problem with Hassig’s explanation is that it is entirely conjectural.

What sets apart Ochoa’s solution from those of de la Serna, Nuttall and Hassig is that when following the principle of beginning the calendar year on the day after the observable equionox, no explicit intercalation is necessary, nor are any calculations or record-keeping of a deep day count.  The intercalation arises naturally as the number of days between the end of the 360- xiuhpohualli and the beginning of the next after the equinox naturally varies between five and six days. For the Aztec commoner, the principle is simply that when the last day of the year is over, the waiting period for the beginning of the new year begins, and the waiting period ends when the priests calls that the sun is in the right position. Calendar priests will be aware that every four years there are six days before the equinox rather than the usual five, but since the nemontemi are already out of count and simply fill up the rest of the year, they do not need to make explicit mention of any “intercalation”, they simply keep counting the tonalpohualli day count and then restart the year count on the equinox. In this way, the Aztecs had a smoothly functioning calendar which could function without significant deviation from the tropical year, and which could be observed in all communities that shared the custom of beginning the new year on the vernal equinox, regardless of what month they used as the first in the year.

The Nuttall-Ochoa model has a number of major advantages over all previous calendar models:

•  It solves the leap year problem without the necessity of explaining how the intercalation of days was accomplished without further confounding any existing mismatch between local calendar variants.
•  It requires minimal astronomical knowledge to use since it can be maintained as a self-correcting system through the simple cultural practice of beginning the year count the day after the observable equinox, without the necessity of making calculations into the past or future or keeping records of bissextile years.
•  It is congruent with the clear cultural relations between the calendar rituals and the agricultural cycle and the close cultural association between the year and the growth period.
•  It is congruent with the archeologically attested importance of the equinox, and with the use of westward-oriented double temples that allow for ease of observation of the equinox sun between the two temples, and which symbolically divides the year into two deities who then represent the estival and hibernal solstices.
• It is linguistically plausible based on the literal and cultural meanings of ‘nemontemi’ (“they vainly fill up”), and ‘xihuitl’ (year/herb/green(-stone)/comet).
•  It is congruent with what we know about the practices surrounding the Maya solar calendar, including the architectural use of E groups as observation points from where the vernal equinox can be observed relative to the main temple structures.
• It is congruent with the known correlation dates for the arrival of Cortés in Tenochtitlan in 1519 and the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521.

      To me however the best argument comes from the Templo Mayor and has been used by Leonardo Lopez Luján to argue that the temple was tied to the equinox and to the calendar: If we assume that the Mexica new year started right after observing the spring equinox (usually march 21st in the Gregorian calendar), then the sun would rise exactly in between the two shrines on top of the Templo Mayor. AND: The feast for Huizilopochtli in Panquetzaliztli the sun would fall around the Winter Solstice when the sun would be above the Huitzilopochtli temple, and the feast for Tlaloc in Etzalcualiztli would fall on the summer solstice (during the rainy season in central Mexico).  With Ochoa's model, but not with any of the others, this would be the same year after year, without any need to discuss how to put the calendar back in sync with the sun. 

This image based on the official model of the Templo Mayor at the Museo Templo Mayor, shows how the sun would be observed from the Quetzalcoatl temple on the Equinox, and on the winter solstices - if Ochoa's model is correct.
Can this be a coincidence?

Finally, as a treat, here is a link to  Calmecac Anahuacs "Aztec Date app" which calculates any given date according to the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation. You can use it to find out what date you were born, married in the Aztec calendar.

Update (28/04/2017): Additional Arguments:

I have been encouraged to also mention the main arguments against the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation, so I will do this here. Traditionally it has been believed that the Aztec year was named after the day-sign (in the tonalpohualli ritual calendar) of the first day in the year. If we follow the Nuttall-Ochoa model, the first day of the year however is not the one that defines the year bearer - rather years seem to be named after the thirteenth day of the new year - this does seem a somewhat arbitrary principle, although thirteen is of course an important number.

Also a final argument in favor of the correlation , although a somewhat subjective one, is that in the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation and none of the others, my birthday falls on the Tonalpohualli day 13 Ozomahtli, about which the Florentine codex writes (in Anderson and Dibble's translation): "It was said that anyone who was born upon this day sign became a highly favored person; he succeeded and endured on Earth. He was well respected and recognized; he was famed and honored; hence he was one who prospered, enjoyed glory, was compassionate, and served others. As a chieftain, he was strong, daring in battle, esteemed, intrepid, able, sharp-witted, quick-acting, prudent, sage, learned and discreet; an able talker, and attentive. To everyone he brought happiness, as much as to comfort the afflicted and provide succor. And if such did not befall one, it was said that he himself, by his own doing, neglected and destroyed his day sign through vice, because perchance he took not good heed, perhaps did not perform the penances well.The closing day sign 13 Ozomatli was named Tonacatecutli. And likewise they said that the one then born would become aged; they said that he would finish his work, endure on Earth, and be admired" (Florentine Codex, vol. 4-5:53-54).

Bibliography:

• Aveni, A. F. (2016). The Measure, Meaning, and Transformation of Aztec Time and Calendars. In The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs (p. 107). Oxford University Press.
• Caso, A. (1967). Los calendarios prehispánicos (Vol. 6). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
• Graulich, M. (2002). Acerca del” Problema de ajustes del año Calendárico mesoamericano al año trópico”. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 33(033).
• Hassig, R. (2001). Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico. University of Texas Press.
• Lopez Luján, L. (2005). The offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan. UNM Press.
• Nuttall,Zelia. 1894. Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System. Communicated to theTenth International Congress of Americanists in Stockholm. Bruno Schulze.Dresden.
• Nuttall, Z. (1904). The periodical adjustments of the ancient Mexican calendar. American Anthropologist, 6(4), 486-500.
• Sprajc, I. (2000, January).Problema de ajustes del año calendárico mesoamericano al año trópico. In Anales de Antropología (Vol. 34, pp. 133-160). UniversidadNacional Autonoma de Mexico, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas.
• Tena, R. (1987). El calendario mexica y la cronografía (Vol. 161). Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Tongues of Aztlan: The Nahua migrations and dialectology

In my last post I showed the basic split between eastern and western Nahuatl dialects, and how different dialects could be classified as belonging to either of the two branches. In this post I summarize a talk I gave at the Mesoamerican conference at CalState L.A. this past saturday, in which I gave my interpretation of the history of migrations that brought the Nahuas to their current locations from their ancestral homeland.

My narrative is based on three avenues of evidence:

1. Linguistic evidence. By analyzing how the structure of shared linguistic innovations between dialects reflect historical relationships and splits, give us a way to understand how ancestral dialect groups moved, split and moved again. 
2. Ethnohistorical evidence. By analyzing accounts told by the Nahuas about their own past we can find clues to how they themselves understood the relaiton between groups of speakers and their historical and geographic relations.
3. Archeological evidence. By analyzing material culture in different locations we can trace population movements and cultural innovations or changes. 

There are several different views of where the Nahuan languages originated:

Terrence Kaufman 2001 thinks the proto-Nahuan language must have been spoken somewhere North of the Huasteca region in Tamaulipas or San Luis Potosi before entereing the basin of Mexico where according to his interpretation they the Western group split off.  His main argument for this location is what he sees as loanwords in proto-Nahuan from Wastek/Huastec Mayan (Teenek) and the Otomanguean language Pame. 

Christensen and Beekman 2003, rather see the homeland in the Bajio region of Zacatecas, Jalisco, Aguacalientes and Queretaro. This view they base on the fact tha they have archeologically documented a large population movement out of this region into central Mexico starting in about 500AD. 

Other, less well supported suggestions for the location of the ancestral Proto-Nahuan speech community include the coast of Nayarit and even Durango/Sonora/Chihuahua. I follow Christensen and Beekman, both because I disagree with Kaufman regarding the Teenek influence in proto-Nahuan which I find negligible, and also because my own investigations have found more commonalities between Nahuan and Cora (Naayerite) and Huichol (Wixarika), suggesting to me a more westerly origin in contact with these languages. My interpretation of contact in Nahuan prehistory is thus more consonant with Christensen and Beekman than with Kaufman's account. 

This then, using the three kinds of evidence and the Bajio as a place of origin, provides us with the following narrative: 

Late Classic (500-600AD):

By the late classic Speakers of Eastern Nahuatl are entering Mesoamerica from the Bajio, drawn by the metropolis of Teotihuacan. They settle in a broad area across the central highlands from the Huastec region to Guererro. Possibly the Huastec and Guerrero branches already split from the other Eastern languages - or mor likely they formed a dialect continuum, which was only subsequently broken apart.

Epiclassic (600-800AD):

Then at the fall of Teotihuacan around 600AD the demographic weight of Central Mexico shifts towards the new centers of Cholula/Cacaxtla, and Xochicalco. Here Eastern Nahuas come into contact with Maya speakers - Maya influence in the Cholula region in this period is well documented. Perhaps, including the ancestors of the Teenek Maya people, if we assume that they had not yet arrived in their current location (this is in contrast to Kaufman's view of Huastecs arriving in their current position much earlier than that, but consonant with Robertson and Houston's argument for a much later Huastec migration). Cholula is one of the centers from which the religion based around the worship of Quetzalcoatl spreads, southeast in to the Maya region and west into the highlands.

Early Post-Classic (800-1000)

In this period Western Nahuas, who had stayed behind in contact with Naayerite, Wixarika and Otomi people move into Central Mexico settling at the site of Tula, Hidalgo. Previous scholars such as Una Canger 1988 and Terrence Kaufman have seen Tula as a center of dispersal of Eastern Nahuatl. I disagree, since I consider this date to be much too late, and because there are no Eastern varities spoken in the area of Tula, only Western ones and Otomi. Kaufman consider the Otomies to be a later intrusion in the area - I know of no convincing evidence for this. Rather I think that clearly the Western Nahuas were closely aligned with Otomies (e.g. the Acolhua of Texcoco were multiethnic Otomi-Nahuas even in the14th century), and probably Tula, was composed of both Otomi and Nahua populations. The many important calques between Otomi and Nahua described by David Wright Carr, date to this period, and I believe a number of loans in both directions as well.

Then after settling in Tula, the Western Nahuas who use /ahmo/ as their only negation word, move into the Central Mexico Valley and arrive in Cholula. Here they rout the Eastern Nahuas and Mayas who live there, and make them flee towards the gulf coast, towards the province of Olman-Xicallanco. This event is suggested by the account in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca which tells us about the invasion of Tolteca-Chichimeca who rout the Olmeca-Xoiclanca from Cholula. It is also supported by the work of Geoffrey McCafferty whose excavations at Cholula have demonstrated warfare and a change in the material culture of the site around the time of the entry of the Eastern Nahuas (his Olmeca-Xicallanca) in the 7th century and at the time of the entry of the Western Nahuas (his Tolteca-Chichimeca) in the 9th century. My argument here is that the Olmeca-Xicallanca only came into existence when they left Cholula, for Olman-Xicallanco - that is they were named after the destination where they went after leaving Cholula, and not for their origin before arriving there. The arrival of the Western Nahuas split the Eastern Nahuas into three groups - the Isthmian group who settled the gulf coast of southern Veracruz and well into Tabasco, and the North-Eastern Huastec-Nahuas who settled in the Sierra Huasteca.  The Sierra de Puebla varieties also split off at this time. The Isthmian and Sierra de Puebla groups subsequently changed /tl/ to /t/, developed new grammatical strategies for negation, and began dropping their /y/s wordinitially before /e/.  Perhaps the fact that one of the Eastern group of Nahuas the Isthmians, changed their /tl/ to  /t/ is due to Maya influence, since there is no /tl/ sound in Mayan, and Maya speakers must have found it hard to pronounce. The Isthmian Nahuas, also seem to have had the closest ties to the Chontal Mayas in the Tabasco region where both languages are still spoken in close contact.

Another group of Western Nahuas split from the central group going into Mexico state, backtracking towards the pacific coast and north into Michoacan, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Durango. They became the Western Peiphery. They are characterized by a frequent if sporadic change of /tl/ to /l/, and the use of -lo for the plural subject, and a number of other innovations. 

Postclassic: 1000-1500AD

The Postclassic period sees the continued dominance of Western Nahuas centered in the Mexico Valley, the rise of Azcapotzalco, and later the triple alliance. During this period Western features extend into most of the historically Eastern varieties, creating a zone of diffusion in the central Nahua speaking area  (from the sierra Zongolica across Southern Puebla into Morelos and Central Guerrero) where Western and Eastern traits mingle freely. With the rise of Tenochtitlan, Western influence reaches its maximum extent and, except for Pipil which has by then reached in El Salvador and Guatemala, no Eastern varieties escape being influenced by Western Nahuatl.

Conclusions:

This narrative leads us to the current distribution with clearly demarcated Western and Eastern peripheries, and a large central diffusion area marked by dialect mixture and koineization (as suggested by Canger 2011).  My narrative builds on and is largely consonant with most other studies, and mostly differ in the timing and in the identification of Tula as the center of the Western dispersal and Cholula as the center of Eastern dispersal. 

Bibliography:

Canger, U. (1988). Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions.International Journal of American Linguistics, 28-72.

Canger, U. (2011). El nauatl urbano de Tlatelolco/Tenochtitlan, resultado de convergencia entre dialectos: Con un esbozo brevísimo de la historia de los dialectos. Estudios de cultura Náhuatl, 42, 243-258.

Canger, U., & Dakin, K. (1985). An inconspicuous basic split in Nahuatl.International journal of American linguistics, 358-361.

Kaufman, T. (2001). The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results. Paper posted online at http://www. albany. edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa. pdf. University of Pittsburgh.

Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2009). Historical linguistics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica, 20(02), 221-231.

Robertson, J., & Houston, S. (2015). The Huastec Problem. in Faust, K. A., & Richter, K. N. (Eds.). (2015). The Huasteca: Culture, History, and Interregional Exchange. University of Oklahoma Press.

McCafferty, G. G. (1996). Reinterpreting the great pyramid of Cholula, Mexico.Ancient Mesoamerica, 7(01), 1-17.

McCafferty, G. G. (1996). The ceramics and chronology of Cholula, Mexico.Ancient Mesoamerica, 7(02), 299-323.

Carr, D. C. W. (2008). La Sociedad Prehispánica en las Lenguas Náhuatl y Otomí◊. Acta Universitaria, 18(Esp), 15-23.

Cacao: How a Single Word Holds the Key to Understanding the Mesoamerican Past

In this blog post I am going to summarize what is probably the most interesting example of how historical linguistics, in extreme this case the etymology of a single word, participates as evidence in the process of understanding ancient cultures.

A cup of hot Cacao with freshly made chocolate patties
on banana leaves in the back. Tlaquilpa, Veracruz 2014.

The word is question is cacao (or in English cocoa, a mangled version of the former with its own funny history), which describes the fruit of the tree Theobroma cacao, which in the form of chocolate  has provided a lot of deliciousness to people throughout the world.

The significance of this word is such that by determining its etymology, we have an important clue as to what language was spoken by the people who formed the first major civilization in Mesoamerica, the Olmecs.

Who created Mesoamerica?

Because the word has two different proposed etymologies, one that goes back to the deep past of the Mixe-Zoquean language family, and one that traces the word to the earliest Nahuan language, the word was become the lightning rod for the debates pitting the Nahuas and the Olmecs against each other as being the "founders of Mesoamerican civilization". 

Little chocolate figures in the shape of
 Olmec "colossal heads"

Specifically, one group of scholars argue that the Olmecs were a Mixe-Zoquean speaking people who cultivated maize, beans, squash and cacao and exported their knowledge and vocabulary to most of the other language groups in Mesoamerica. In this history the Nahuas originated in the U.S. Southwest and only entered Mesoamerica after the civilization had been established by speakers of Mixe-Zoquean, Otomanguean and Mayan languages. Another group of scholars argue that Uto-Aztecan speakers were among the original founders of the culture area, and that they were among the most politically and culturally important groups already in the formative era (starting about 2000 BCE, and becoming the Classic period around 200 CE), and that they might have been the main group behind the rise of the mega-empire of Teotihuacan (Teotihuacan collapsed around 600 CE). 

Cacao beans still in the pod.

The way civilizations have started in the world is generally through the development of new ways of making food that are easier and more efficient than older ones and which allow for population increase.  In Mesoamerica these innovations were the cultivation of maize from from wild species of grass, and the cultivation of squash and beans. This happened sometime between 3000 and 2000 BCE and led to people becoming sedentary, building villages and later towns with central governments. From around 2000 BCE the first major monuments and monumental architecture begins to be found in the gulf coast region of Mexico, and this culture with its distinct style of stone monuments is what archeologists call the Olmec culture. Its innovations and styles spread across Mesoamerica over the next period, being absorbed into local styles. This has led some archeologist to consider the Olmecs to be the "mother culture" of the Mesoamerican civilization, although others like to consider it only a "big sister" whose good ideas were accepted and used by the other siblings who had developed the main ingredients of civilization independently. 

So what does all this have to do with Cacao?

Cacao in Mesoamerica:

A maya ruler receiving his hot kakaw
 from a servant on a classic period vase.
Across Mesoamerica Cacao has
been associated with wealth and power,
even to the point of cacao beans being
used as a form of currency.

Just like maize, beans and squash, cacao is indigenous to Mesoamerica, and has been cultivated from wild species. But unlike these other species cacao is not a staple crop that provides nutrients necessary for basic survival, rather it is a luxury crop, that provides delicious theobromine for the nervous system at the expense of a laborious process of cultivation and processing. This means that the presence of cacao demonstrates that a culture has moved beyond the stage of bare necessities in generated a surplus. The generation of surplus in turn marks the beginning of class division and hierarchy, and a complex division of labor - the social signs archaeologists associate with the phenomenon we call "civilization". Therefore, signs of the consumption of cacao is a kind of litmus test for when and where Mesoamerican civilization can be said to have begun. 

Vessels tested positive for theobromine from San Lorenzo,
Powis, Cyphers et al. 2011.

As it is, we find the first signs of cacao cultivation and consumption among the Olmecs in the sites of El Manatí, and at San Lorenzo between  1800 and 1000 BCE. The signs are sure that it was cultivated for consumption because archeologists have found ceramic vessels with residue traces of theobromine, the active ingredient of cacao.
So the Olmecs were definitely into the chocolate rush. But what did they call this delicious addiction?

The word Cacao in Mesoamerica:

The Maya word kakaw spelled in
hieroglyphs as KA -KA-WA

The reason not only the fruit cacao is interesting but also the word is that almost all Mesoamerican languages have a very similar sounding word for it. This suggests that all these come from a single source. And if all Mesoamerican languages have their word for Cacao from a single source then it is logical to assume that they received the both word and the fruit it described from the same source as well. So basically it appears that the Olmecs exported both their ideas and their words to the rest of Mesoamerica. The trick then is to find out what language the Olmecs spoke - which is easier said than done since it is hard to determine which of the many languages that have similar words is the original one.

Note how similar the word for cacao is in different Mesoamerican languages (Source Kaufman & Justeson 2007):

• proto-Zoquean - *kakawa;  
• proto-Mixean - *kakaw;
• Nahua - /kakawa-tl/; 
• Mazahua - /kakawa/; 
• proto-Mayan, Totonac, Salvador Lenka - /kakaw/;
• Paya/pech - [kaku]; 
• Purhépecha: - /khe´kua/. 
• Boruka, Tol,-  and Honduras Lenka -  [kaw]

So where did the word originate?

The Mixe-Zoque hypothesis:

Cigar-smoking Maya
monkey-deity
holding a cacao pod.

In a hugely important 1976 paper Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman proposed that the Olmecs had spoken proto-Mixe-Zoque, the language that became the ancestor of the Zoquean and Mixean languages of southern Mexico. The argument was based on the observation that a number of important culture words could be demonstrated to have diffused  throughout Mesoamerica, and the evidence suggested that the diffusion was from Mixe-Zoquean languages into all the other ones. This was the paper that made the Mixe-Zoque languages, which had earlier been considered inconsequential and hardly even considered, a serious contender for the "Olmec question". Importantly, this argument doesn't hinge on the word for Cacao alone, because also words for other important cultivars such as gourds, squash, tomato and bean were traced to Mixe-Zoque along with several other important cultural concepts such as words related to maize preparation, to religion and to material culture. Previously many had considered it most likely that the Olmec spoke a Mayan language and that there was a direct continuity between Olmec and Maya cultures.


The Nahua hypothesis:

Tlapalcacauatl "red cacao"
from a colonial Nahuatl herbary.

In 2000 Karen Dakin and Søren Wichmann proposed specifically that the word Cacao did not originate with Mixe-Zoquean as proposed by Campbell and Kaufmann 24 years earlier, but that it had originated with a Uto-Aztecan language, probably Nahuan. They argued that if proto-Mixe-Zoquean had indeed had the word *kakawa, then most of the dauhgter languages would have irregularly derived forms of the original word. Rather they suggested the word had probably been borrowed by Mixe-Zoque speakers from some other language, leading to the irregularities they observed. They then looked at Uto-Aztecan language and found that many of them have a word for 'egg' that can be reconstructed as *kawa or *kapa. Nahuatl in fact is one of the only languages that do not have a word for 'egg' based on this stem (usually having either totoltetl "bird-stone", or tekwsistli originally meaning conch). They then argue that Nahuan kakawatl could be derived from an earlier Nahuatl word kawatl 'egg' (a word which is not actually attested) and that the reduplication of the -ka- could have originated from the process that makes nouns that are described as similar to what ever is being reduplicated. I.e. kakawatl could have originally meant "that which is similar to an egg". Cacao beans, although physically very different from eggs in color, size and shape, do have a thin shell that has to be removed after toasting, which can perhaps be considered similar to an eggshell. They took this argument to show that Nahuas had been present in Mesoamerica and played a major role already during the classic period, probably being associated with the empire of Teotihuacan, which they considered the source from which the Nahua word had spread to other languages including Mixe-Zoque and Maya. 

In 2001 Jane Hill proposed that contrary to received wisdom which considered the Uto-Aztecan languages to have originated in the U.S. Southwest with proto-Nahuatl speakers migrating southwards into Mesoamerica eventually taking up agriculture and many cultural traditions of the Mesoamericans, instead the opposite had happened. Hill argued that proto-Uto-Aztecan had been spoken in Mesoamerica and that its speakers had participated in develoiping Mesoamerican civilization whereafter a large group of Uto-Aztecans migrated northwards eventually giving up agriculture for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Her argument was that in her reconstruction of the language family's history, some maize related words could be recostructed all the way back to the Uto-Aztecan proto-language. 

In 2005 Martha Macri argued that three words in a very early Mayan glyphic text (from 480 AD) could be considered Nahuatl loans into Mayan, and that these words were all related to Cacao. The words in question were WITIK(I) which she related to Nahuatl /witeki/ "to beat something", MULUL which she related to Nahuatl /mo:lli/ "ground spice sauce" (sometimes containing Cacao), and KOXOM(A) which she related to Nahuatl /koxo:ni/ "for a hollow vessel to make a sloshing sound" or /koxo:nia/ "to stir a pot".  I must admit that personally, I find Macri's proposal completely unconvincing because none of the words have more than a speculative relation to cacao, they are not documented in any contemporary Mayan languages as loans, and because there is  not a good fit between the form of the proposed Nahuatl source and the given maya syllables, it seems unlikely that the words would be loaned in this form since they require loaning the verbs as stems and not as fully inflected verbs,  and finally because at least two of them actually have completely plausible Maya meanings and etymologies. I think Macri's proposal can be safely ignored, which most subsequent scholarship has also done. 

Nonetheless throughout the early 2000s there was a general sense that the tide was turning against the Mixe-Zoquean hypothesis and that probably Nahuas had been present in Mesoamerica earlier than was generally thought.  


Mixe-Zoquean strikes back:
But Terrence Kaufman would have none of it. He maintained vigorously that the Mixe-Zoquean hypothesis was solid. First in 1993 he and John Justeson had published an elaborate deciphering of the undeciphered Epi-Olmec (meaning late Olmec) or Isthmian hieroglyphic script arguing that it was written in the proto-Zoquean language. This would seem to be a serious piece of support for a Mixe-Zoquean-Olmec connection.  The decipherment was nonetheless contested by some Maya archeologists who were unable to read a third text using the proposed decipherment (Houston & Coe 2004). 

Doña Cristina, of Tlaquilpa, Veracruz,
 grinding Cacao with the toasted beans
in front and a calabash full of cinnamon.
The chocolate paste comes out of the grinde
and is mixed with sugar. 

In 2007 Justeson and Kaufman published a forceful rebuttal of Dakin and Wichmann's argument. They argued that the proposal of the Mixe-Zoquean as the donor language was solid both because in their reconstruction it fit well with the forms in the Mixe-Zoquean daughter languages and because it was supported by the fact words for many other cultigens could be demonstrated to have been most likely diffused from Mixe-Zoquean. (Wichmann actually agrees with Kaufman that the Olmecs spoke Zoquean and has provided evidence for that himself, so the disagreement for Wichmann seems to be mostly about the presence of Nahuas at Teotihuacan and the specific etymology of the word cacao). They also argued that the proposal deriving kakawatl from egg was untenable. They show that proto-Nahuatl had many borrowings from Mixe-Zoquean, and that even setting the word kakawatl aside all other loans from Nahuatl into Mesoamerican languages postdate the classic period. This seems to establish that there is a general pattern of Mixe-Zoquean influence on Nahuan dating to the classical period, but no general pattern of Nahuan influence on other languages in the classical period. They argue that if the Uto-Aztecan word 'egg' which they reconstruct as *kava had been derived regularly into Nahuan it would not have given /kakawatl/ but /*kaka:tl/ - the derivation proposed by Dakin and Wichmann, they consider to be impossible. Furthermore they show that when other Mesoamerican languages do borrow words from Nahuatl they do so with the absolutive suffix attached, i.e. the Nahua and Mixe-Zoquean forms should have been *kakawat and not /kakaw/. 

In 2009 Justeson and Kaufman published another intense counter argument, refuting in toto, Jane Hill's proposal of Uto-Aztecan originating in Mesoamerica (which had already attracted general dissaproval from Uto-Aztecanists), by showing that her Maize related reconstructions could only be dated to proto-Southern Utp-Aztecan, but not to the common ancestor of all Uto-Aztecan languages. Although Kaufman and Justeson did accept a slightly earlier date for the entry of Nahuas into Mesoamerica than they usually had (originally they considered Nahuas to have arrived around the time of the fall of Teotihuacan, but in 2009 ).  This, coupled with a wide set of other rebuttalls to Hill's theory, again shifted the balance to see Nahuas as latecomers in Mesoamerica, and Mixe-Zoquean speakers as the drivers of the Olmec "mother culture".

Further arguments were presented by Dakin in 2010 arguing for Nahua influence in the Mayan lowlands during the classic period. And in 2010 and 2012 Hill published again an argument to the effect that proto-Uto-Aztecan was a Mesoamerican language. Her maize related etymologies have meanwhile been rejected by scholars such as William Merrill (2012, Merrill et al. 2009), and Lyle Campbell (Campbell & Poser 2008). 

So what is the status? Confirmation Bias and its effects:

Too most ordinary people, including here most archeologists, historians and linguists, these debates simply look like a big pile of "my kung fu is stronger than your kung fu" - hard to make head or tails of.  This is because it requires intimate familiarity with both a vast number of languages, as well as the methods of historical linguistics, to judge which claims are better founded than others. 

I think that in the end, what will make most people side with one of the proposals is probably less about the soundness of the historical linguistics behind the proposals, and more about which story of the Mesoamerican past they prefer for their own personal reasons, whether aesthetics, preferences or experiences with one or more of the ethnic groups or scholars involved etc. 

Humans are funny that way. We are very quickly convinced by any evidence that points us in the direction we already want to go. 

Personally, I count myself on the Mixe-Zoque team for the time being. This may actually be because I know less about Mixe-Zoque than about Nahuatl and Uto-Aztecan, which means that I am more critical of the proposals involving Nahuatl, than of the ones involving languages I know less about. I have found the proposals of Dakin and Wichmann, Hill and Macri to be unconvincing in the ways they stretch meanings and forms to create what to me comes across as speculative etymologies. For example to get from *kava "egg" to *kakawatl "cacao" there are at least two leaps of faith, first the idea that they could be conceived as similar, and secondly the fact that the *kawa "egg" etymon is not attested in Nahuan at all - one such leap I might be willing to accept, but not two. Maybe Kaufman does the same kind of etymological twisting with Mixe-Zoquean, but I am unable to see it, and I am more convinced by his Nahuatl work.

My main point with this blog post is to demonstrate how historical linguistics is far from an exact science, but an interpretative science, where different scholars interpret the same facts differently based on their background knowledge.

And also to show how a single word for a fruit and a delicious beverage can become the key to such a highly political question as identifying the speakers of one language or another as the founders of the Mesoamerican civilization.

Bibliography:

• Campbell, L., & Kaufman, T. (1976). A linguistic look at the Olmecs. American Antiquity, 80-89.
• Campbell, L., & Poser, W. J. (2008). Language classification. History and method. Cambridge.
• Coe, S. D., Coe, M. D., & Huxtable, R. J. (1996). The true history of chocolate. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Dakin, K., & Wichmann, S. (2000). Cacao and chocolate. Ancient Mesoamerica, 11(01), 55-75.
• Dakin, K. (2010). Linguistic Evidence for Historical Contacts between Nahuas and Northern Lowland Mayan Speakers. Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual Interchange Between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period, 217.
• Hill, J. H. (2012). Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a Mesoamerican language. Ancient Mesoamerica, 23(01), 57-68.
• Hill, J. H. (2001). Proto‐Uto‐Aztecan: A Community of Cultivators in Central Mexico?. American Anthropologist, 103(4), 913-934.
• Houston, S. D., & Coe, M. D. (2003). Has Isthmian writing been deciphered.Mexicon, 25(6), 151-161.
• Joyce, R. A., & Henderson, J. S. (2010). Forming Mesoamerican Taste: Cacao Consumption in Formative Period Contexts. In Pre-Columbian Foodways (pp. 157-173). Springer New York.
• Justeson, J. S., & Kaufman, T. (1993). A decipherment of Epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing. Science, 259(5102), 1703-1711.
• Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2007). The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica, 18(02), 193-237.
• Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2001, March). Epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing and texts. In The Proceedings of the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop: The Coming of Kings; Epi–Olmec Writing, March 10–11, 2001, University of Texas at Austin(pp. 93-224).
• Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2009). Historical linguistics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica, 20(02), 221-231.
• Macri, M. J. (2005). Nahua Loan Words from the Early Classic Period: Words for cacao preparation on a Río Azul ceramic vessel. Ancient Mesoamerica,16(02), 321-326.
• Merrill, W. L. (2012). The historical linguistics of Uto-Aztecan agriculture.Anthropological Linguistics, 54(3), 203-260.
• Merrill, W. L., Hard, R. J., Mabry, J. B., Fritz, G. J., Adams, K. R., Roney, J. R., & MacWilliams, A. C. (2009). The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(50), 21019-21026.
• Powis, T. G., Cyphers, A., Gaikwad, N. W., Grivetti, L., & Cheong, K. (2011). Cacao use and the San Lorenzo Olmec. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(21), 8595-8600.
• Wichmann, S. (1995). The relationship among the Mixe-Zoquean languages of Mexico. University of Utah Press.