There were four original leaders of the Mesoamerican people: Balam Akbar, Balam Ik, Balam K'itze, and Sutz’ Masa Manix. The first three are named Balam or Jaguar since they led their band or family out from the jaguar room of the cave, La Gruta del Espíritu Santo in northeast El Salvador. One family came out of the Sutz’ or bat room. There were also two other families that came out of the bat room, the Tams and Ilocs, but they decided not to join the proto Mayan religion, which was to worship the three gods that gave three gifts essential for survival and to communicate with the being at the center of the universe.
It is time to discuss the lineage of the first four leaders. When they left Isla Tigre, where they first formulated their religion, they went to four islands. Going to the most distant island, Teotipa in the middle of Lago Güija, was Balam K'itze. From Balam K'itze came most of the Mayan tribes, including the Ch’olan, Ch’orti’, Tzeltalan, Q’anjobalan, the Huasteca, and the Yucatec.
The leader of the four was Masa Manix, who first envisioned domesticating plants from the wild edible plants that were all around. Because he was the leader, the band of Masa Manix was allowed to go to the most beautiful island, Teopan in Lago Coatepeque, which they called Tammakchan, 'deep inside the rainbow.’ This is the leader of the Quiche Maya, and this lineage also includes the Kakchikels, Mameans, Q’eqchi’, and Poqom. The people of Lago Guija and Lago Coatepeque related to each other on a continual basis and their language did not vary for thousands of years.
Balam Ik and his band went to an island at the mouth of the Lempa River. At that time, which was about 8000 BC using the Mars long-count calendar, the ocean was nearly 100 meters lower than it is now. The mouth of the river was likely several miles beyond where it is today. Given the nearby very early archaeological site of Tehuacán, this island seems to have been called Teokan, Island of Learning. The Teokanos immediately began studying the ocean and soon became adept at sailing, first using dug-out canoes along the shore, and later constructing balsam rafts from the plentiful balsam trees in present-day La Libertad. The Popol Vuh says that "their (the whippoorwills) mouths gape to this day", which I take to mean a reference to the sails used by the inhabitants of Teokan.
The Popol Vuh says that Balam Ik had no children. I believe this is a metaphor for the village being destroyed, such as in a flood. There is one flood event as determined by scientists: the flood of ~6400 BC, when most of the water of Lake Agassiz swept into the oceans in a matter of hours. It is estimated that Lake Agassiz had more cubic gallons of water than all current fresh water lakes combined. Is it possible that the Teokanos saw the tsunami wave coming, jumped on their rafts with some water and food, and survived? Unlikely, but … we’ll explore that more later on.
The fourth original leader of the civilized people was Balam Akbar, or Night Jaguar. Balam Akbar’s band stayed in the east, making the other three bands sad. They settled on the third Salvadoran lake with an island, with the island called Teomeka, present-day Olomega. The name most likely comes from mek’e, which means ‘embrace’, ‘wrestle’, or ‘carry on one’s hip’. So Teomeka means ‘embrace island’. It was the island, surrounded by water, which kept the Teomekanos safe. Because this band was so distant from the two Mayans bands in far western El Salvador, its language, now called Potón Lenca, began to differentiate at that early date. Eventually the word for island, ‘teo’, was changed to ‘olo’. Their island home then became known as Olomeka. From the band that stayed at Olomeka come the Lencas, the Uluas, and the Olmecs.
The four bands had regular gatherings, called conacastes by the Mayans and guanacastes by the Olomekanos. It meant, 'gathering of brothers.' The guanaco was the ‘brotherhood’. Even to this day Salvadorans are called 'guanacos' – ‘bros’. We would call such a gathering, 'council meeting' (with a little bit of Burning Man added in). Likely the four islands took turns hosting the guanacastes, usually held under the large trees that also became known as 'guanacastes'. Everybody would go to the guanacastes. There was much trading, talking, singing, drinking chicha, and dancing. The guanacastes also served another purpose – to have the young people from different islands intermarry to foster close relations between islands and to keep a strong gene pool. Unless the boy was in line to become leader of his island, the boys went to live with the girl’s family, in some cases learning a new language.There were also very special guanacastes every 15 or 17 years when the planet Mars was nearing its retrograde time close to the center point of the galaxy. The shamans and astronomers of each island would gather and talk for days on end in preparation for these events. The purpose was to determine if the first sign of Mars' backward motion would happen on a new date on the Mars retrograde calendar.
After the flood event of about 6400 BC, which wiped out the civilized village of Teokan, the site sat empty for a while. But there was unease: the band on Teotipa at Lago Güija were on one of the sources, the navel, of the Lempa River, and someone else needed to be at the mouth of the river.
After several years or maybe a few generations so the memory of the flood had faded, a decision was made to re-occupy the mouth of the river. Most likely the new settlement was formed from Lago Olemeka - they were closest to the Lempa mouth. Again the settlement was called Teokan. The language of this new band also began to vary from both the Olomekanos and the proto-Mayans. They began to call their island, Tehuakan.
Global warming continued in this period and the oceans continued to rise – perhaps by as much as several inches per year between 6200 BC and 5600 BC. The Tehuakanos became very tired of having to relocate their village and their gardens every 20 or 30 years. The community split in two: one group stayed, but the other group went far away, and perhaps they were allowed to leave only if they went far away. They moved nearly 900 miles northwest onto the Mexican high plateau. They took the name Tehuakan with them, as well as their seed stock, and settled in the valley now called Tehuacán in the state of Puebla. Most likely this is the language group called the Oto-Pamean and includes the Otomi, Mazahua, Chinantecan, Chorotega, and Subtiava people, among others.
The ones who stayed continued to relocate while the ocean rose until 5000 BC, when it reached its current level, more or less. At that time the Tehuakanos "del mar" relocated to an island that was then, as now, at the mouth of the Rio Lempa, Isla Montecristo. From their base at Montecristo the Tehuakanos became extremely adept at sailing in the ocean on balsa rafts as well as on reed boats, using the reeds along the Torola River and elsewhere.
The Tehuakanos began sailing throughout the Pacific Ocean, exploring the Central and South American shoreline. One thing became clear very quickly: while Central America had slack currents that required great effort and patience to get anywhere, the South American coast had powerful currents that would take one out into the broad expanse of the Pacific. It was this quest to know the world that caused the Tehuakanos to split once again. In about 3500 BC, one group of Tehuakanos moved from Montecristo, El Salvador, to Sechin Bajo, Peru, not far from the coast, bringing with them corn, squash, cotton, and other plants, as well knowledge of working with stone. Later they built the Caral site, along the ocean, and then on the Altiplano the city on Isla del Sol in Lago Titicaca, remembering the importance of islands to their cosmology. They also build the city of Tiwanaku (or Tiahuanaco), giving their name to the site, although by then their pronunciation of the name changed once again. They also shared another name, calling one of the large mountain animals of the altiplano, the "guanaco."
The Tehuakanos who stayed at Montecristo played with other names for their island, including Tehu ak kin, which means 'island of blades of grass,' since the area of coastal San Vicente is amazing for the amount of vegetation or monte that grows very quickly. This is likely where the 'monte' portion of the name Montecristo came from and this name carried over to other places that they moved to, such as Monte Alto and Monte Alban. They also used the name Tehu k’anan, which means ‘island of plenty’ and Tehu k’ana’n, which means ‘island of golden ripe maize’.
At about 1800 BC it seems that Tehuacan moved, perhaps in its entirety, first to the Guatemalan coast, to the site of Monte Alto, and soon to the valley of Oaxaca, not far from the long lost cousins. This people became the Zapotecs. At some later point the Mixtecas split off from the Zapotecs. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec shares the Tehuakano name. Another place that bears the Tehuakano name is perhaps the most spectacular and again shows that the Tehuakano-Zapotecs were some of the best stone workers the world has ever seen, Teotihuacán, the ‘tihuacan’ portion of the name coming from the Zapotecs.
Another of the Mesoamerican peoples joined the Zapotecs in founding Teotihuacán, but they came from the west not the east.
