The Maya and the World, An Update

MARY MILLER — KARL TAUBE –

AN ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF THE GODS AND SYMBOLS OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND THE MAYA — 1997–2017

This new printing of an old book does not negate the essential character of this book, but it reduces it tremendously because from 1997 to 2017 archeology, history, and general Maya and Aztec studies have discovered so many new things that the book sounds obsolete on quite a few questions. It should have been upgraded and updated. One of the most important shortcoming, and it was already a shortcoming in 1997, is the linguistic approach of these people. Systematically mixing up Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayas, Olmecs and other people from both Central Mexico and southern Mesoamerica is leading to obvious confusion. The linguistic confusion is that we are not told what relationships existed and still exist among the various languages concerned, some of them disappeared and some others are still active, but the history of these languages is never specified. Is Maya derived from Olmec? Probably, but not explicitly said, nor proved or disproved. Does any relationships exist between Maya and Aztec, or the language associated with the Aztecs, viz. Nahuatl? The question is not asked and not answered. All linguistic information is exclusively (except in some illustrations) given in transliterated Latin writing, never in the real local writing of these people. Very frustrating indeed for Maya which was advanced in its writing system, but also in Nahuatl and other languages which had some writing systems. We cannot from what we are given even imagine if those languages are root languages, isolating languages, agglutinative languages, or synthetic-analytical languages. When we are dealing with a civilization at that level of linguistic and technological development, it is necessary to give the linguistic elements in local writing, in the transliterated Latin alphabet (as close as possible to the real pronunciation), the indispensable linguistic parameters to understand what we are dealing with (and that implies the T-numbers of these elements), the “word-for-word” or “formative-element for formative-element translation, and finally a semantic equivalent in English for example. This is never done and no real reference to any standard book or study on the subject is…