[Aztlan] Re: Boats and ports

[nhopkins at mailer.fsu.edu]

It is not impossible that the Pacific trade route is reflected in the 
presence of some or all of the following ¨language isolates¨(languages 
with no local or otherwise known relations) along the coast:

Xinca/Lenca (along El Salvador-Guatemala coast)
Mixe-Zoque (intrusive ca 1900 BC in Soconusco, cf. Clark on Mokaya people)
Huave (at Isthmus of Tehuantepec)
Tequistlatec/Chontal of Oaxaca (Huatulco area)
Cuitlatec (Guerrero, along Balsas drainage)
Various other little known languages of Guerrero
Tarascan (Michoacan)
Totonac (at Teotihuacan earlier than Gulf, maybe pushed in by Tarascans)
Seri (mainland, Bay of California)

The problem is that nobody has ever been able to shop any relations 
with So American languages, but then the data are slim and noone knows 
just where to look.  But there are those shaft tombs, fabric designs, 
metallurgy, four-legged jaguar effigy metates, and yatayata that had to 
come from somewhere.  To say nothing of the movement of maize 
agricuture (see Histories of Maize, Academic Press).

Lots of grist for the mill.

Nick Hopkins  ----------------------------------------------------------------