Inserted within the building walls are over 40 large carved slabs dating to Monte Albán II and depicting place-names, occasionally accompanied by additional writing and in many cases characterized by upside-down heads. Over 300 “Danzantes” stones have been recorded to date, and some of the better preserved ones can be viewed at the site's museum.Ī different type of carved stones is found on Monte Albán Building J in the center of the Main Plaza. Dating to the earliest period of occupation at the site, these monuments may depict leaders of competing centers and villages captured by Monte Albán, some identified by name. With the emergence of Monte Albán as the area's main city by 500 BCE, monuments with similar danzantes figures were erected at the site. The monument is thus dated before 500 BCE, and it was initially considered the earliest writing in Mesoamerica.Īt Monte Albán Period I (500-200 BCE) Glyphs on the San Jose Mogote Danzante depict drops of blood and a possible calendar day-name "1 Earthquake." By 500 BCE, San José Mogote's 1000 years of dominance ended, and it was relegated to the status of a lesser community that fell under Monte Albán's control. The 19th century notion that such monuments, also found at Monte Albán, represent dancers is now largely discredited, are now seen to clearly represent tortured, sacrificed war prisoners. Placed as a doorstep to the ceremonial structure, it has a relief of what appears to be a dead and bloodied captive. "dancer") from San Jose Mogote, Oaxaca, is considered to contain the earliest example of Zapotec writing. Monument 3 (also described as Danzante, lit. The two shaded glyphs between his legs are likely his name, Earthquake 1. The nature of the archaeological record generates differential preservation of the media through which writing was probably conveyed, and since it is plausible that early scribes used as well perishable materials like wood, cloth, bark paper, and deer hides, several aspects of the origin of writing and its early societal uses in Oaxaca and in Mesoamerica in general may lay beyond our reach. He early evidence of writing in Oaxaca does not necessarily imply that the Zapotecs invented the first Mesoamerican system of phonetic writing. Origins įor some time, San Jose Mogote monument 3 (see below) has been considered among the earliest evidence for writing in Mesoamerica, roughly contemporary with La Venta Monument 13, and only slightly later than the San Andres glyphs (both representing possible Olmec writing), but well before Epi-Olmec (Isthmian) script. Read in columns from top to bottom, its execution is somewhat cruder than that of the later Maya script and this has led epigraphers to believe that the script was also less phonetic than the largely syllabic Maya.Īccording to Urcid (2005), the script was originally a logo-syllabic system and was probably developed for an ancient version of contemporary Zapotecan languages, but its application to language varieties other than "Ancient Zapotec" encouraged the development of logophonic traits. Some signs can be recognized as calendar information but the script as such remains undeciphered (if not undecipherable). There and at other sites, archaeologists have found extended text in a glyphic script. One characteristic of Monte Albán is the large number of carved stone monuments one encounters throughout the plaza. Rising in the late Pre-Classic era after the decline of the Olmec civilization, the Zapotecs of present-day Oaxaca built an empire around Monte Albán. The Zapotec script is the writing system of the Zapotec culture and represents one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |