Olmec, Mayan, Mande, Writing, La Venta Offering No 4

In this chapter we will use the inscribed celts found at La Venta in 1955, at offering No.4, the inscribed jadeite celt from near El Sitio, and the Black Stone Serpent Sceptre of Cardenas, Tabasco as examples of the Olmec writing. All the translations of Olmec artefacts are based on the Manding dictionary of Delafosse (1921).

La Venta Offering No 4

 The celts of La Venta offering no.4, were discovered by Drucker in 1955. These celts show both the plain and cursive forms of the Olmec script. These inscribed celts were part of a collection of 16 figurines and jade and serpentine found in offering no.4 (Soustelle, 1984).

In La Venta offering no.4, fifteen figurines were arranged around a central figure. According to the inscriptions on the celts in this collection, the personage buried in this tomb was Pè. The bold head of Pè suggest that he was their cult leader. A pit had been dug over the incised celts and figurines, a hole leading from the earth's surface down to the burial cache suggest that this was used for pouring libations on the figurines.

This view is supported by the fact that the inscriptions written in the plain Olmec syllabic style ( Fig. 1), mentions the fact that Pè tomb was to act as a talisman or protective shrine for the faithful.

La Venta Offering No 4

 The six celts found in La Venta offering no.4, were arranged in a semi-circle. Four of the celts were engraved. The first and last celts in the semi-circle were not engraved. Moving from left to right two engraved jade celts when joined together depict an Olmec priest wearing an elaborate headdress and holding what appears to be a torch or baton in his hand.

This figure probably represented Pè. It is analogous to the figure engraved on a jade Breastplate (no. 13:583), now located in the National Museum of Anthropology at Mexico City ( Wuthenau, 1980).

The first two Laventa celts probably were originally joined together and served as a symbol of authority for the deceased priest while he was alive. The breakage of this celt into two parts probably symbolized the withdrawal of the priest's physical body, from the physical plane to the spiritual plane.

The placement in the tomb of Pè's "celt of power" was meant to hold his spiritual power at the grave site. The third engraved celt at La Venta offering no.4, was engraved in the cursive Olmec script (Fig. 2). In the text of the cursive script we find Pè's obituary.

 Transliteration of Symbols on Figure 1

Fè fè mi pè po gbè: without breath void consumed Pè pure/holy below (in), lu bè ma: the family habitation lay low the celebrity (the) Lord (in), yu ka-pè ba ko: the big hemisphere tomb Ka-Pè the Great (in) the back of, se yu we: (to) possess for posterity the big hemisphere tomb Hence, ta lu ba i: this place the family habitation great/strong thine, gba kyè be po: fixed in the ground inheritance/estate here pure/holy, mbe be: lay low the celebrity lay low the celebrity.

Translation
"Without breath. Void. Consumed (lies) the Hole Pè, below the family habitation. Lay low the celebrity, the Lord, in the hemisphere tomb. The Great Ka-Pè, in the back of the big hemisphere tomb, possesses (this place) for posterity. Thine inheritance (is) fixed in this ground. Here the pure celebrity lays low. Lay low the celebrity".

Vocabulary
fè, v. to be void, empty, without breath mi, v. consumed Pè, proper name; v. spacious, pin down po, adj. : superlative of white translated as holy, pure, the good gbè, v. lay low, below; virtue lu, family habitation bè, v: lay low the celebrity ma, it can be translated as "Great one" or "Lord"; it can also be a suffix joined to a substantive or a verb to show intensity. yu, the big hemisphere tomb Ka, a title given to Olmec elites ba, adj.: great ka, adv.: in the back of se, possess (this place) for posterity we, adv.: hence ta, this place, place, here lu, n.: the family habitation ba, adj.: great i, pronominal particle of the second person: thine, thou, you gba, transitive v.: fixed in the ground kyè, inheritance, estate be, here

Sources: Delafosse, Soustelle, Wuthenau, Drucker

Olmecs, Mayan, Mande, Manding, Libyco-Berber, Writing

The view that Africans originated writing in America is not new. Scholars early recognized the affinity between Amerindian scripts and the Mande script(s). By 1832, Rafinesque noted the similarities between the Mayan glyphs and the Libyco-Berber writing.

 And Leo Wiener (1922, v.3), was the first researcher to recognise the resemblances between the Manding writing and the symbols on the Tuxtla statuette.

In addition, Harold Lawrence (1962) noted that the "petroglyphic" inscriptions found throughout much of the southern hemisphere compared identically with the writing system of the Manding. Rafinesque (1832) published an important paper on the Mayan writing that helped in the decipherment of the Olmec Writing. In this paper he discussed the fact that when the Mayan glyphs were broken down into their constituent parts, they were analogous to the ancient Libyco-Berber writing.

The Libyco-Berber writing can not be read in either Berber or Taurag, even though these people use an alphabetic script similar to the Libyco-Berber script which is syllabic CV and CVC in structure.

This was an important article because it offered the possibility that the Mayan signs could be read by comparing them to the Libyco-Berber symbols (Rafineque, 1832). This was not a far-fetched idea, because we know for a fact that the cuneiform writing was used to write four different languages: Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian and Akkadian. The Mande people often refer to themselves as Sye or Si 'black, race, family, etc.'.

The Si people appear to have been mentioned by the Maya (Tozzer, 1941). Tozzer (1941) claimed that the Yucatec Maya said that the Tutul Xiu (shiu), a group of foreigners from zuiva, in Nonoualoco territory taught the Maya how to read and write. This term Xiu agrees with the name Si, for the Manding people (also it should be noted that in the Manding languages the plural number is formed by the suffix -u, -wu).

Winters (1979, 1997) was able to read the Libyco-Berber signs because they were analogous to the Manding or Si signs recorded by Delafosse (1899). These Si people , now centered in West Africa and the Sahelian region formerly lived in an area where Libyco-Berber inscriptions are found (Winters, 1983, 1986). Using the Manding languages Winters (1983) was able to decipher the Libyco-Berber inscriptions.

The second clue to the Manding origin of the Olmec writing was provided by Leo Wiener in Africa and the Discovery of America (1922,v.3). Wiener presented evidence that the High Civilizations of Mexico (Maya and Aztecs) had acquired many of the cultural and religious traditions of the Malinke-Bambara (Manding people) of West Africa. In volume 3, of Africa and the Discovery of America,

Wiener discussed the analogy between the glyphs on the Tuxtla statuette and the Manding glyphs engraved on rocks in Mandeland.

In Table 1, we show a comparison of the Libyco-Berber, Vai syllabic signs, and Olmec signs from selected sites to test the hypothesis of Lawrence (1961), Wiener (1922) and Winters (1979, 1983), that the Olmec writing is of Manding origin.

The phonetic values of the Olmec signs are the phonetic values the Vai syllabary, which is analogous to the Olmec writing (Winters, 1979, 1997). Progress in deciphering the Olmec writing has depended largely on a knowledge of the Malinke-Bambara (Manding) languages and the Vai writing system (Delofosse, 1899). This language is monosyllabic. The terms in the Manding languages explain the characteristics of the Olmec civilization. The Olmec inscriptions are primarily of three types 1) talismanic inscriptions found on monuments, statuettes, vessels, masks, and celts; 2) obituaries found on celts and other burial artifacts; and 3) signs on sceptres denoting political authority.

The Olmec script has two forms or stages : (1 syllabic and 2) hieroglyphic. The syllabic script was employed in the Olmec writing found on the masks, celts, statuettes and portable artifacts in general. The hieroglyphic script is usually employed on bas-reliefs, stelas (i.e., Mojarra, and tomb wall writing. The only exception to this rule for Olmec writing was the Tuxtla statuette. Olmec is an agglutinative language. Olmec had mixed syntactic constituents because of its use of affixes.

  The basic word order for Olmec was subject (S), object (O), and vowel (V) in simple declarative sentences. Due to the use of several prefixes in Olmec there are some VO sentences in the corpus of Olmec inscriptions.

In the Olmec script the consonants k, m, and n, was often placed in front of selected Olmec words, e.g., be : mbe, ngbe; and pe: Kpe. In these instances the nasal consonant can be dropped, and the monosyllabic word following the initial consonant element can be read , e.g., Kpe= pe ' spacious, pin down, flat lands, etc.

Thusly, the appearance of CCV or CCCV Olmec forms are the result of the addition of initial consonantal elements to monosyllabic Olmec terms. Olmec Syllabic Writing. The famous inscribed celts of offering no.4 LaVenta, indicate both the plain (Fig. 1) and cursive syllabic Olmec scripts (Fig. 2).

In the cursive form of the writing the individual syllabic signs are joined to one another, in the plain Olmec writing the signs stand alone. The cursive Olmec script probably evolved into Olmec hieroglyphics. The inscriptions engraved on celts and batons are more rounded than the script used on masks, statuettes and bas-reliefs. The pottery writing on the Los Bocas and Tlatilco ware are also in a fine rounded style.

Sources: Harold Lawrence,  Delofosse, Tozzer, Terrence Kaufman, Leo Wiener, A. Winters, Rafinesque

Olmec, Mayan, Mande, Writing

African Origin of the Mayan Writing. The major evidence for the African origin of the Olmecs comes from the writing of the Mayan people. As mentioned earlier most experts believe that the Mayan writing system came from the Olmecs (Soustelle, 1984).

Moreover, this view is supported by the appearance of jaguar stucco mask pyramids (probably built by the Olmecs) under Mayan pyramids e.g., Cerros Structure 5-C-2nd, Uxaxacatun pyramid and structure 5D-22 at Tikal.

This would conform to Schele and Freidel's belief that the monumental structures of the Maya were derived from Olmec prototypes. An Olmec origin for many Pre Classic Maya sites, would explain the cover-up of the jaguar stucco mask pyramids with classic Maya pyramids at these sites. The evidence of African style writing among the Olmecs is evidence for Old World influence in Mexico. The Olmecs probably founded writing in the Mexico. Schele and Freide (1990) have discussed the Olmec influence over the Maya. This agreed with Brainerd and Sharer's, The ancient Maya (1983, p.65) concept of colonial Olmec at Mayan sites.

It would also explain Schele and Freidel's (1990) claim that the first king of Palenque was the Olmec leader U-Kix-chan; and that the ancient Maya adopted many Olmec social institutions and Olmec symbolic imagery. B. Stross (1973) mentions the Mayan tradition for a foreign origin of Mayan writing. This idea is also confirmed by Mayan oral tradition (Tozzer, 1941), and C.H. Brown (1991) who claimed that writing did not exist among the Proto-Maya.

Terrence Kaufman has proposed that the Olmec spoke a Mexe-Zoquean speech and therefore the authors of Olmec writing were Mexe-Zoquean speakers. This view fails to match the epigraphic evidence. The Olmec people spoke a Manding (Malinke-Bambara) language and not Zoquean. There is a clear African substratum for the origin of writing among the Maya (Wiener, 1922). All the experts agree that the Olmec people gave the Maya people writing (Schele & Freidel, 1990; Soustelle, 1984). Mayanist also agree that the Proto-Maya term for writing was *c'ihb' or *c'ib'.

The Mayan /c/ is often pronounced like the hard Spanish /c/ and has a /s/ sound. Brown (1991) argues that *c'ihb may be the ancient Mayan term for writing but, it can not be Proto-Mayan because writing did not exist among the Maya until 600 B.C. This was 1500 years after the break up of the Proto-Maya (Brown, 1991).

Landa's tradition concerning the origin of writing among the Maya supports the linguistic evidence (Tozzer, 1941). Landa noted that the Yucatec Maya claimed that they got writing from a group of foreigners called Tutul Xiu from Nonoulco (Tozzer, 1941). The Tutul Xi were probably Manding speaking Olmecs.

The term Tutul Xiu, can be translated using Manding as follows: Tutul, "Very good subjects of the Order". Xiu, "The Shi (/the race)". "The Shis (who) are very good Subjects of the cult-Order". The term Shi, is probably related to the Manding term Si, which was also used as an ethnology. The Mayan term for writing is derived from the Manding term *se'be. In Figure 2., are the various terms for writing used by the Manding/Mande people for writing.

Brown has suggested that the Mayan term c'ib' diffused from the Cholan and Yucatecan Maya to the other Mayan speakers. This term is probably derived from Manding *Se'be which is analogous to *c'ib'. This would explain the identification of the Olmec or Xi/Shi people as Manding speakers.There are also many cognate Mayan and Manding terms (Wiener, 1920-22) . The Transcription of the Olmec Writing It is generally accepted that the transcription of an unknown language/script requires 1) bilingual texts and/or 2) knowledge of the cognate language(s).

It has long been felt by many Meso-Americanist that the Olmec writing met non of these criteria because, no one knew exactly what language was spoken by the Olmec that appear suddenly at San Lorenzo and La Venta in Veracruz, around 1200 B.C.E. This was a false analogy. For over 50 years there has been evidence that the Olmec people probably wrote their inscriptions in the Manding language (Winters, 1979,1997) and the Manding writing from North Africa called Libyco-Berber, was used to write the Olmec (Winters, 1979, 1997) and Mayan (Rafinesque, 1832) language.

To decipher an unknown script it is unnecessary to reconstruct the Proto-language of the authors of the target script. In both the major transcription of ancient scripts, e.g., cuneiform and ancient Egyptian, contemporary languages in their synchronic states were used to gleam insight into the reading of dead languages. No one can deny, that it was Champolion's knowledge of Coptic, that led to his successful transcription  of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Sources: Soustelle, Schele and Freidel, Brainerd and Sharer,  B. Stross, Tozzer, C.H. Brown, Terrence Kaufman, L. Wiener, Landa, Winters, Rafinesque

The Olmec

The first civilization in the Americas was founded by a people we call Olmecs.

The Olmec came to Mexico from Africa over 5000 years ago. The Olmec were a cosmopolitan people.  As a result we find many other nationalities living in the Olmec cities in addition to Africans, from many parts of the Old World. Alexander von Wuthenau in has recorded the iconographic evidence for the European and Chinese people that traded with the Olmec people. The ancient civilization of the Olmec thrived, in what are now the Mexican state of Veracruz and Tabasco. The Olmec also built huge pyramids and created their own form of hieroglyphic writing. They carved four huge heads, each weighing 60 ton and over 7 feet tall from basalt. Scientist believed the heads represent rain spirit? LOL!!

The races recorded in this table are based on the Polish Comparative-Morphological School (PCMS).

And from now on we will refer to this image as Table 2. The PCMS terms are misleading. As mentioned earlier the Dongolan , Armenoid, and Equatorial groups refer to African people with varying facial features which are all Blacks. This is obvious when we look at the iconographic and sculptural evidence used by Wiercinski (1972b) to support his conclusions.

Wiercinski (1972b) compared the physiognomy of the Olmecs to corresponding examples of Olmec sculptures and bas-reliefs on the stelas. For example, Wiercinski (1972b, p.160) makes it clear that the colossal Olmec heads represent the Dongolan type. It is interesting to note that the empirical frequencies of the Dongolan type at Tlatilco is .231, this was more than twice as high as Wiercinski's theoretical figure of .101, for the presence of Dongolans at Tlatilco.

The other possible African type found at Tlatilco and Cerro were the Laponoid group.

The Laponoid group represents the Austroloid-Melanesian type of (Negro) Pacific Islander, not the Mongolian type. If we add together the following percent of the Olmecs represented in Table 2, by the Laponoid (21.2%), Equatorial (13.5), and Armenoid (18.3) groups we can assume that at least 53 percent of the Olmecs at Tlatilco were Africans or Blacks.

Using the same figures recorded in Table 2 for Cerro, we observe that 40.8 percent of these Olmecs would have been classified as Black if they lived in contemporary America. Rossum (1996) has criticized the work of Wiercinski because he found that not only blacks, but whites were also present in ancient America. To support this view he,claims that Wiercinski was wrong because he found that Negro/Black people lived in Shang China that he compared ancient skeletons to modern Old World people.

First, it was not surprising that Wiercinski found affinities between African and ancient Chinese populations, because everyone knows that many Negro/African/Oceanic skeletons (referred to as Loponoid by the Polish school) have been found in ancient China see: Kwang-chih Chang The Archaeology of ancient China (1976,1977, p.76,1987, pp.64,68). These Blacks were spread throughout Kwangsi, Kwantung, Szechwan, Yunnan and Pearl River delta. Skeletons from Liu-Chiang and Dawenkou, early Neolithic sites found in China, were also Negro. Moreover, the Dawenkou skeletons show skull deformation and extraction of teeth customs, analogous to customs among Blacks in Polynesia and Africa.

Secondly, Rossum argues that Wiercinski was wrong about Blacks in ancient America because a comparison of modern native American skeletal material and the ancient Olmec skeletal material indicate no admixture. The study of Vargas and Rossum are flawed.

Izapa Stela no.5

They are flawed because the skeletal reference collection they used in their comparison of Olmec skeletal remains and modern Amerindian populations because the Mexicans have been mixing with African and European populations since the 1500's. This has left many components of these Old World people within and among Mexican Amerindians.

The iconography of the classic Olmec and Mayan civilization show no correspondence in facial features. But many contemporary Maya and other Amerind groups show African characteristics and DNA. Underhill, et al (1996) found that the Mayan people have an African Y chromosome. This would explain the "puffy" faces of contemporary Amerinds, which are incongruent with the Mayan type associated with classic Mayan sculptures and stelas.

Wiercinski on the other hand, compared his SRC to an unmixed European and African sample. This comparison avoided the use of skeletal material that is clearly mixed with Africans and Europeans, in much the same way as the Afro-American people he discussed in his essay who have acquired "white" features since mixing with whites due to the slave trade. A. von Wuthenau (1980), and Wiercinski (1972b) highlight the numerous art pieces depicting the African or Black variety which made up the Olmec people.



This re-analysis of the Olmec skeletal material from Tlatilco and Cerro, which correctly identifies Armenoid, Dongolan and Loponoid as euphemisms for "Negro" make it clear that a substantial number of the Olmecs were Blacks support the art evidence and writing which point to an African origin for Olmec civilization. In conclusion, the Olmec people were called Xi. They did not speak a Mixe-Zoque language they spoke a Mande language, which is the substratum language for many Mexican languages. The Olmec came from Saharan Africa 3200 years ago.

They came in boats which are depicted in the Izapa Stela no.5, in twelve migratory waves. These Proto-Olmecs belonged to seven clans which served as the base for the Olmec people.

Izapa Stela no.5

Physical anthropologist use many terms to refer to the African type represented by Olmec skeletal remains including Armenoid, Dongolan, Loponoid and Equatorial. The evidence of African skeletons found at many Olmec sites, and their trading partners from the Old World found by Dr. Andrzej Wiercinski prove the cosmopolitan nature of Olmec society.

This skeletal evidence explains the discovery of many African tribes in Mexico and Central America when Columbus discovered the Americas (de Quatrefages, 1836). The skeletal material from Tlatilco and Cerro de las Mesas and evidence that the Olmecs used an African writing to inscribe their monuments and artifacts, make it clear that Africans were a predominant part of the Olmec population. These Olmecs constructed complex pyramids and large sculptured monuments weighing tons. The Maya during the Pre-Classic period built pyramids over the Olmec pyramids to disguise the Olmec origin of these pyramids.

Sources: Alexander von Wuthenau, Izapa Stela no.5 transcribed, Dr. Andrzej Wiercinski, Underhill, et al, Rossum