Translates Hieroglyphs

University linguistic anthropologist John S. Justeson and linguist Terrence Kaufman of the University of Pittsburgh have published an article in the July issue of Science on their latest work deciphering the pre-Columbian language of the epi-Olmec civilization.

In the article, Justeson and Kaufman report their work in translating a column of hieroglyphs found in November 1995 that was previously thought to be too badly weathered to interpret. The two researchers have succeeded in an almost complete translation of this new column, from the La Mojarra monument or stela, and have found it confirms their previous findings in terms of content, spelling, and language structure. Justeson and Kaufman had previously deciphered 80 percent of the monument’s epi-Olmec text, which is believed to be the earliest readable text in Mesoamerica.

The stone monument was taken from a river bottom in southern Veracruz, Mexico in 1986. The researchers date the stela from A.D. 159, a time that came after the Olmec civilization and before the Maya. Its lengthy text described the adventures and political intrigues of a warrior named Harvester Mountain Lord, whose likeness is carved on the stone. Their original finding was reported in the March 1993 issue of Science.

One distinguishing element of the epi-Olmec language is its word pictures or logograms for the sunrise, the stars and the planets. The researchers found the epi-Olmec language is an early form of Zoquean, a branch of the Mixe-Zoquean language family still spoken by 100,000 to 140,000 rural people in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas and Oaxaca today.

Family Ties, by fellow faculty members John R. Logan and Glenna D. Spitze, and winner of the 1997 William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award on the American Sociological Association, has been published in paperback by Temple University Press.

The work deals comprehensively with family relationships over a longer period of the life cycle than previously studied, and reveals misconceptions about grown children caring for their aged parents.

Logan and Spitze are both in the Department of Sociology, with the former also in public policy, thelatter in women’s studies.