The Origins of Mesoamerican Writing

Abstract

9569Joyce Marcus 1Department and Museum of Anthropology,University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109The demarcation line between iconographic symbolism and writing is faint at times,faint enough at least for Olmec enthusiasts to leap over it and l~roclaim as writing whatin other cultures would pass as depiction of attributes on body or clothing, a claimwhich would embrace everything from painted teepees to mediaeval heraldry.J. Eric S. Thompson (59, p. 205)Ancient writing systems which remain undeciphered have had unusual ca-pacity to arouse excitement in both professionals and amateurs. In the NewWorld, the scholarly study of Mesoamerican writing systems has been under-taken for only 100 years. This short period of investigation, conducted by arelatively small number of investigators, has nevertheless led to some majorbreakthroughs; but most scholars would agree that we are still unable to tran-scribe, interpret, or entire texts. We are frequently able to obtain the gistof various passages, but we cannot read them in the spoken language as theIndian speakers might have,In 1865 a German scholar, Dr. Ernst Frrstemann, accepted the position ofhead librarian at the Royal Public Librar.y in Dresden. This move resulted in agreat advance for the field of Maya writing. The Royal Library in Dresden hadlong contained a fiber-cloth manuscript labeled an invaluable Mexican bookwith hieroglyphic figures (60, p. 153). To F6rstemann we owe a considerabledebt for his initial elucidation and publication of the entire Dresden Codex in1880. This Postclassic Maya book probably dates to A.D. 1200-1250, thoughsome scholars feel it is a copy of a much earlier book. F6rstemann then began astudy of the two other extant codices currently found in the cities which providetheir names, the Codex Madrid and Codex Paris. Later F6rstemann turned his1Part of the research for this paper was facilitated by Grant RO-21433-75-460 from theNational Endowment for the Humanities, whose generous support is gratefully acknowl-edged. In addition, Jeremy A. Sabloff provided me with hard-to-get publications withoutwhich I could not have completed the paper. Figures 1, 3-11, and 14 were drawn by JaneMariouw, while Mark Orsen drew Figures 2 and 12. Very special thanks to Mary Hodge,who typed the entire manuscript and prepared Figure 13.35