Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Maya Magic Maya Myth
THE MAYA LINGUISTIC MYTHOLOGY
A WORK IN PROGRESS
CRITICAL NOTES
I have been
working on many languages in my long life, and I learned the language of my
passport at the age of six at school. I still use my old creolized version of
Occitan when I am “home” and I left that home definitely in 1976, but I went
there a couple of times for short visits or a vacation.
I crashed Pali
in two weeks, the basics, in Sri Lanka in 2005 to be able to read the
Dhammapada since I discovered when I arrived in Sigiriya that I was supposed to
teach the English of Buddhism to young Buddhist monks in Pidurangala Monastery.
I have been
working on the emergence of Homo Sapiens in Black Africa and then their
migrations out of Black Africa starting with their first migration to Northern
Africa, mainly. And then the other migrations out of Black Africa to the whole
world, which is slightly more than what Homo Erectus did in his own days. And I
followed the phylogenetic emergence of human articulated language and came to
the idea that the three vast migrations out of Black Africa correspond to the
three vast families of languages based respectively on the first articulation
first, on the second articulation second, and on the third articulation third.
That led me
to the idea that Cro-Magnon spoke a Turkic language that is today surviving in
Basque. Theo Vennemann came to that idea first though I worked on Basque with
my first Research Director Jacques Teyssier in 1973, before leaving to go to
Davis, California.
The mystery
of the arrival of Homo Sapiens in the Americas led me to enter the field of
South America and there I found a vast, rich, and ancient civilization based on
stone, carving and cutting stones, and building monumental structures with
stone. And the same way as Cro-Magnon and many others in all continents
painted, carved and decorated their caves, and probably many other surfaces and
materials with drawings and geometric forms whose meaning we ignore still
completely because Deep Learning has not yet been used on these symbols, the
Maya, before them the Toltec, after them the Incas and the Aztec and many other
groups still not acknowledged, have painted, carved their stone constructions
and developed, in what I consider must have been a good 5,000 years (BCE), a writing
system that is still mysterious.
My hypothesis
is that the people followed the same route as culture and language that developed
along the way. Now it has been proved cacao had been developed in Bolivia at
least 3,000 years before it was certified among the Mayas, the migration of the
people and their culture came from the south. I am a phylogenic linguist and
have always worked on old languages like Old Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and a few
more in the Germanic field, not to mention Sanskrit and Indo-European. I state
from the start that we cannot go back and as Darwin proved with his theory of
evolution we cannot reconstruct the past from the present we can only follow
the same route as our ancestors and reconstruct the present from the past. We
have to start with the need to communicate among Hominins, then what it became
with Homo Sapiens who found himself, due to mutations that were selected for
him to become a long-distance fast bipedal runner in the savanna when he came
out of the primeval forest; who inherited from his Hominin ancestors some
already developed first articulation enabling a larger lexicon than just nine
to twelve calls like apes before them; who, from this first articulation
founded on the rotation of consonants and vowels, was able to do a lot more
because of the mutations I have just said that amplified the larynx, multiplied
the flexibility of the subglottal zone and the articulatory apparatus, plus the
deep sinuses. Then Homo Sapiens developed the second and then the third
articulations. At each stage migrations happened and we thus have the three
vast families of languages based on the phylogenic evolution of man’s speaking
capability and of a language based on vowels and consonants, then on spatial
and temporal categorizations, then on syntactic functions, the whole
architecture being the result of the projection of the basic communicational
situation into the linguistic means we are speaking of. The matrix of our
syntax is always the basic communicational situation.
Maya became
then a new challenge because the old writing system was all but originally
arbitrary, like the Sumerian Cuneiform writing system. It was phylogenetically
both representational and phonological (based on a syllabary, the simplest form
of the first articulation, based on the rotation of vowels and consonants)
symbolism. This written language, being integrated into vast paintings and sculptures,
is quite obvious even the most realistic glyphs are symbolical of the meaning,
and of the sounds going along with their referential meaning. I can even say
that we will be able to understand the written language of Cro-Magnon when we
are able to accept the simple idea that the geometric forms are symbolical of
words and referents and that the realistic paintings are part of the symbolic
process. So far, the paintings are on one side and the symbols on the other.
Maya tells us that it is false: first of all these symbolical representations
are based on a story, a language, communication, and the language itself when
written finds its meaning in the rich, deep and extremely composite symbolical
architecture of this written language that the transliteration of the last six
or maybe seven centuries has brutally rejected. Only Marshall McLuhan has
properly shown how writing is a tremendous loss on the basis of a phenomenal
gain.
My idea then
is that, if we want to fully enjoy the old Maya writing system, we have to get
Deep Learning into the picture and identify all the recurrent symbolical
elements that are used to build first the simple glyphs and then the composite
glyphs, just like the strokes of the Chinese characters.
You will find
in the seventy-odd pages below the review of a few books, including one on
Celtic henges in Europe (starting in Gobekli Tepe in Turkey) that brings me to
the idea that we have two human architectures, one based on circles, one based
on squares, both targeting elevation, hence standing stones on circles and
pyramids on squares. The two are not reciprocally exclusive, but they can work
together. My idea is that the architecture of Maya written language is
pyramidal, whereas oral language is always continuous, hence circular. This is
the central working hypothesis of the third volume of my research on “The
Language of Cro-Magnon.” The first volume was published as a Kindle book a
couple of years ago. The second volume is ready to be laid out for publication,
but this work will take some time still, and the third volume is how cultures
evolve phylogenetically from one to the other, always in that descending
temporal direction (even if borrowing may at times twist the connections). And
that’s the only way to understand the link in Maya old culture and writing
system of the number three and the concept of blood sacrifice, self-sacrifice
as well as human-sacrifice. And that should make us think because the trinity
of the Christians is the recuperation of the ternary pattern from “pagan”
religions and the third character is the son (God and his Spirit are in the
first verse of Genesis) and it is a blood sacrifice, both self-sacrifice for
the Christians, and human-sacrifice for the Romans and I could add the High
Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Just enjoy
the seventy-odd pages.
Dr.
Jacques COULARDEAU
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1- LINDA SCHELE – MARY ALLEN MILLER
THE BLOOD OF KINGS, DYNASTY AND RITUALS IN MAYA ART – 1986
2- DENNIS TEDLOCK – RABINAL ACHI, A MAYAN
DRAMA OF WAR AND SACRIFICE – OXFORD UP - 2003
3- WOODEN BOOKS (EIGHT DIFFERENT AUTHORS) –
GLASTONBURY, UK –
MEGALITH STUDIES IN STONE – 2018
4- CONCLUDING
HYPOTHESES
5- BIBLIOGRAPHY
6- APPENDIX
– ANDREA STONE & MARC ZENDER – READING MAYA ART, A HIEROGLYPHIC GUIDE TO
ANCIENT MAYA PAINTING AND SCULPTURE – 2011
THE MAYA LINGUISTIC MYTHOLOGY
Linguists have to realize language is a living mental organism. It does
not have chromosomes and it does not have any biological genetic history. But
it has a phylogenetic history.
The main engine that creates and develops language is the specific and unique human communicational situation in which Homo Sapiens found himself 300,000 years ago. This is still true and this communicational situation provides the language it develops with a dynamic that is inescapable.
The second engine of language is its inner architecture that can only be what it is: three articulations in a precise order, phonology (rotation of vowels and consonants), morphology (spatial and temporal categorizations) and syntax (functional relations between the various categorized elements.
The third level is in fact the articulation between these first two and it creates discourse. No matter what level of phylogenetic development a language has reached, the discourse it will produce will take from the communicational situation what it needs to produce a full discourse at the three levels of phonology, morphology and syntax.
That creates and founds three vast families of languages and my main objective is to position Maya in this model and then to study how the written system they used went a lot deeper than just phonology but integrated a lot of cultural elements that have disappeared from the written language when transliteration finally became dominant. The cultural and mental loss is enormous, but at the same time, the educational and longer-distance communicational gain is enormous.
Then we have to recapture the cultural part that has been lost and we have to develop traditional and modern cultural products, including linguistic and anthropological analyses to provide rebirth and a second life to that distant culture.
Of course, the objective is not to reintroduce blood-sacrifice, but the objective is to understand how this practice of blood-sacrifice over more than one millennium has guided the Maya culture and civilization into development and in the end, has misguided it into extinction, at least on the surface of things, and into its perduration in deeper layers of mental and psychic architecture and creativity. In fact, this blood-sacrifice culture has inspired the resistance of the Maya against all colonializations from the Aztec and then from the Spaniards.
I here present where I stand as for the language right now. In two or three years I will be far ahead of this, if Jun Nal Ye, the Maize God, lends me some more years of life.
The center of this research is the written language of the pre-Classic and Classic periods.
The main engine that creates and develops language is the specific and unique human communicational situation in which Homo Sapiens found himself 300,000 years ago. This is still true and this communicational situation provides the language it develops with a dynamic that is inescapable.
The second engine of language is its inner architecture that can only be what it is: three articulations in a precise order, phonology (rotation of vowels and consonants), morphology (spatial and temporal categorizations) and syntax (functional relations between the various categorized elements.
The third level is in fact the articulation between these first two and it creates discourse. No matter what level of phylogenetic development a language has reached, the discourse it will produce will take from the communicational situation what it needs to produce a full discourse at the three levels of phonology, morphology and syntax.
That creates and founds three vast families of languages and my main objective is to position Maya in this model and then to study how the written system they used went a lot deeper than just phonology but integrated a lot of cultural elements that have disappeared from the written language when transliteration finally became dominant. The cultural and mental loss is enormous, but at the same time, the educational and longer-distance communicational gain is enormous.
Then we have to recapture the cultural part that has been lost and we have to develop traditional and modern cultural products, including linguistic and anthropological analyses to provide rebirth and a second life to that distant culture.
Of course, the objective is not to reintroduce blood-sacrifice, but the objective is to understand how this practice of blood-sacrifice over more than one millennium has guided the Maya culture and civilization into development and in the end, has misguided it into extinction, at least on the surface of things, and into its perduration in deeper layers of mental and psychic architecture and creativity. In fact, this blood-sacrifice culture has inspired the resistance of the Maya against all colonializations from the Aztec and then from the Spaniards.
I here present where I stand as for the language right now. In two or three years I will be far ahead of this, if Jun Nal Ye, the Maize God, lends me some more years of life.
The center of this research is the written language of the pre-Classic and Classic periods.
Publication Date: 1979
Publication
Name: Editions La Dondaine
Human sacrifice (Anthropology Of Religion) * Trinity * Maya
History * Self-Sacrifice * Mayan languages and cultures * Triads * RITUAL BLOOD SACRIFICE
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:42 AM 
