The Quiche Mayas were forced to leave El Salvador in about 2300 BC and by 2000 BC the Ch'orti Mayas at Lago Güija and Lago Coatepeque were anxious to expand beyond their El Salvador home. The Ch'ortis, like the neighboring Lencas and Tehuacanos (Zapotecs), had been sailing the Pacific Ocean for over a thousand years.
But an Atlantic ocean base was needed in order to better explore the four corners of the world. The Ch'ortis had been trading with local people in northern Belize already and it was an easy decision to send an expansion group north to the Corozal Bay, to the site known as Santa Rita. A few hundred years later they sent a much larger expansion group north which began to build the El Mirador site and soon many other sites in the area. Those who went north mixed with the local population and soon the Yucatec or Maya language began to develop. [Click to enlarge the map.]
The Lencas based at Lago Olomega in southeast El Salvador had the same need. They simply went straight north and followed the Ulua River to the coast. There they founded the site of Travesia and from that base explored the Atlantic Ocean extensively. This was the beginning of separation of the El Salvador Lenca language and Honduran Lenca language.
The Atlantic Ocean currents would naturally carry the Ch'orti and Lenca rafts and reed boats north and east around Cuba and then northeast into the North Atlantic. Then a southward current would take them close to the Spanish or West Africa coast. The current from West Africa would take them directly back to Travesia or Santa Rita.
A significant group of Lencas moved about 250 kilometers west to the Mexico-Guatemala border region. Here they founded sites that came to be known as Izapa, Paso de la Amada, La Blanca, Ocos, and El Mesak. A few hundred years later Lencas from Travesia, Olomega, and the Izapa region moved to the Gulf coast area of Veracruz, Mexico, and founded the Olmec civilization. They took with them the name of Olomega (Olomeka) and much of what they learned in their travels of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Tehuacanos, like the Lencas, trace lineage to Balam Akbar. They lived on one of the four original Mesoamerican island civilizations, Teocan, at the mouth of the Lempa River. One of the double meanings of Teocan is 'island of wild vegetation' or 'monte'. Anyone who has spent much time in that region, the Bajo Lempa, can understand why it would be called that. The 'Monte' descriptor in Spanish becomes a trace clue in guessing where they moved to. It appears they moved from Isla Montecristo to Monte Alto in southeast Guatemala, and soon would move to the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico to found San José Mogote and Monte Alban. There they would become known as the Zapotecs.
While all the expansion continued, the base of operations for the Mayas continued to be western El Salvador at the two new sites of Chalchuapa and San Andrés.
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