Thursday, December 5, 2019

Linguistic Evidence for Preclassic Mesoamerican Knowledge of Metals from the Mixe-Zoquean Languages of Mexico


While the archaeological evidence metallurgy in Preclassical Mesoamerica, remains scant, there is linguistic evidence supporting Preclassical knowledge of metals and metalworking. As Brant Gardner wrote:

Linguistic data provide hope that archaeology might yet make a discovery that would alter our understanding of metallurgy dating in Mesoamerican. The word for metal has been reconstructed in the Mixe-Zoquaean vocabulary (*ting-kuy). This is the language group that would have been spoken during Jaredite times. It is therefore certain that there was metal, else there would be no reason to have the word. However, it could have referred to iron ore and not to smelted metal. Confirmation of early metal-working is still absent. (Brant A. Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers: The Book of Mormon as History [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015], 184)

Gardner provides the following for his source of the linguistic data:

Søren Wichmann, The Relationship among the Mixe-Zoquean Language of Mexico, 564. (Wichmann uses a symbol for the “ng” cluster). (ibid., 184 n. 16)

Fortunately, Søren Wichmann has made his book available online:

Søren Wichmann, The Relationship among the Mixe-Zoquean Languages of Mexico (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995)

Here is the relevant excerpt from p. 564 as referenced by Gardner: