In the last ten years, linguists have been able to decipher much of the writing on the Mayan monuments and stella in the central lowlands, including Tikal, and were quite surprised to find that it is closest to the language of the Chorti Maya, perhaps a now-extinct variant called Cholti. The exception are the sites in Yucatan where mainly Yucatecan Mayan was spoken. Chorti Maya originated along the coast of El Salvador and later moved inland, occupying a region from Chalatenango up past Copan to eastern Guatemala.
There are about 28 Mayan languages (as opposed to dialects). There are three main groups, the Huasteca, the Yucatecan, and the remainder (central lowlands to highlands). These three groups split apart as languages between 2000 and 1000 B.C. according to linguists. The Huastecas are located in Verapaz, Tamaulipas, and San Luis Potosí, Mexico, more than 600 miles from the next closest Mayans. Being isolated from the remainder of the Mayans, the Huastecas are very intriguing. But more on that later. The Yucatecas live throughout Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Belize, el Peten and northeast Chiapas (Lacandon).
The central lowland to highland Maya includes four major groups that split apart between 1000 B.C. and 0 A.D. according the linguists: the Greater Quichean, the Mamean, the Greater Kanjobalan, and the Tzeltalan-Cholan. The Greater Quichean primarily consist of language groups in western and central Guatemala with some moving into Peten and eastern Guatemala more recently. The Popomams of far western El Salvador belong to the Quichean group. The Mamean tend to live just west of the Quichean in western Guatemala and eastern Chiapas. In turn, the Greater Kanjobalan tend to live north and west of the Mamean, mainly in Chiapas.
The Tzeltalan-Cholan groups live in two separate groups – the main group in the far west of the Mayan region, in northwest Chiapas and Tabasco, and the Chortis in eastern Gautemala and western Honduras. Anthropologists have determined that the greater-Cholan people previously lived throughout the central lowlands, including el Peten. When the ceremonial centers disbanded due to warfare and environmental degradation they moved in all directions. The few Cholans who remained in el Peten were forcibly removed by the Spanish in the early colonial times.
But it is Chorti (or the now-extinct Cholti) that was spoken at Copan, Tikal, Palenque, and most of the central lowland sites and highlands, during the Classical period. The Chorti came from El Salvador. This provides a clue that the beginning of the Mayan culture originated along the Pacific Coast from Izapa in the north to Quelepa in the south in eastern El Salvador. A distant migration occurred between 2000 and 1000 BC to Potosí and the Yucatan, while between 1000 BC and 0 AD other groups migrated from the Guatemalan coast north into the highlands and began forming distinct Mayan languages.
It is not clear if Lenca of El Salvador and Honduras is also a Mayan language. Most linguists don’t think so. But the Lencas themselves believe they are. If so, they would form a 4th major language group that split off at least 3000 years ago.
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