[Aztlan] Southeastern US/Mesoamerican language contacts

[Nick Hopkins]

Good stories do get around.  In the 1960s I recorded a version of Oedipus told by a monolingual speaker of Chuj (a Mayan language in NW Guatemala), and it matched the original right down to the riddle that had to be solved to win the bride (What walks on four legs in the morning...).  And incorporated into the Coyote-Rabbit trickster tales were the episodes that we know of as the Br'er Rabbit stories, originally African tales (like Tar Baby).  (BTW I don't think these go back to an ancient common origin.)         

Nick Hopkins
> From: michaelruggeri at mac.com
> To: robertleonardhall at sbcglobal.net
> Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:36:19 -0500
> CC: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Southeastern US/Mesoamerican language contacts
> 
> Robert,
> 
> I agree that much of this mythology has its roots far back into the  
> hunting/gathering past in the Americas. The stories are very ancient  
> and traveled through the Americas at a very early time. I believe that  
> some of these mythologies were brought by hunting/gathering shaman all  
> the way from Asia and the myths were then fleshed out by later peoples  
> already familiar with the main concepts behind the ancient myths. That  
> would explain a lot of the strange similarities between tales told  
> north of the Rio Grande and those in Mesoamerica.
> 
> Mike Ruggeri


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