A new analysis of artwork left behind by the enigmatic inhabitants of the abandoned Mesoamerican city Teotihuacan suggests the colorful pictures and shapes may constitute a rudimentary language that ultimately evolved into the language of the Aztecs.
If the team of researchers behind the discovery can successfully decipher the “lost language,” they believe it could offer clues about the identity of Teotihuacan’s builders and the reasons they abandoned the once thriving metropolis.
“If we are right, it is not only remarkable that we have deciphered a writing system. It could have implications for our entire understanding of Mesoamerican cultures and, of course, point to a solution to the mystery surrounding the inhabitants of Teotihuacan,” said Christopher Helmke from the University of Copenhagen.
Previous excavations and decades of research have determined that Teotihuacan was founded sometime around 100 AD. Researchers have also determined that the massive complex of buildings and roadways likely supported as many as 125,000 citizens during its peak. However, scientists and archaeologists haven’t found a conclusive explanation for their disappearance around 600 AD.
As part of an ongoing effort to uncover this enigmatic culture and the reasons for its abandonment of Teotihuacan, Helmke and Magnus Pharao Hansen, also from the University of Copenhagen, analyzed the signs of the city’s remaining colorful murals and several recovered artifacts with similar designs for clues. According to a statement announcing their findings, the team began to see a pattern that indicated the artworks on the walls of the structure and other artefacts likely represented a “linguistic ancestor of the Cora and Huichol languages” as well as Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
Scientists had previously suggested the artworks could represent components of an ancient language. However, the lack of available materials has stymied previous efforts to form a concrete connection to any ancient or existing form of writing.
“In Teotihuacan, you can still find pottery with text on it, and we know that more murals will turn up,” Hansen explained, before adding, “It is clearly a limitation to our research that we do not have more texts.”
A critical component of the new study involved reconstructing a predecessor to the Aztec language Nahuatl that could serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone between the more well-understood Aztec Nahuatl and the artwork found at Teotihuacan. The researchers note that this step was critical to their effort, since trying to find a linguistic connection between the Aztecs and a Mesoamerican predecessor would be almost impossible without a temporal perspective.
“Otherwise, it would be a bit like trying to decipher the runes on the famous Danish runestones, such as the Jelling Stone, using modern Danish,” Helmke explained. “That would be anachronistic. You have to try to read the text using a language that is closer in time and contemporary.”
After creating their Nahuatl predecessor, the team used it to decipher the Teotihuacan “logograms” found within their artworks and on their pottery. Almost immediately, they found a perplexing problem. In some cases, the image of a figure, such as a coyote, appeared to represent the thing itself, meaning an actual coyote. However, in another context, the same image appeared to represent a sound within a larger word or phrase. Called a rebus, these forms of ancient communication are often used to communicate the spoken words or phrases that represent a subject or concept that is too difficult to explain in a single “figurative” logogram.
After further analysis, the team states that the connection between the mysterious inhabitants of Teotihuacan and the Aztecs who inhabited the same area centuries later became increasingly clear. According to their statement, “the signs constitute an actual writing system.” They also note that this writing likely “records” an earlier form of the Uto-Aztecan language, “which a thousand years later developed into the languages Cora, Huichol, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.”
When discussing the study’s limitations, Hansen said, “it would be great if we could find the same signs used in the same way in many more contexts,” and that such a discovery “would further support our hypothesis.”
“But for now, we have to work with the texts we have,” he said.
As far as the implications of their discovery, Hansen noted that their work is the first to use a language “that fits the time period” to prove the phonetic value of individual logograms within the contexts of a larger spoken word or phrase. The researcher said this process can “serve as a baseline for others to build on” when undertaking efforts to “expand their understanding of the texts.”
In the study’s conclusion, the team stated that their findings also seem to indicate that people who spoke a predecessor of the Nahuatl language arrived in the area much earlier than previously believed. If correct, those same people would be “direct descendants of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan.”
The researchers suggest more work is needed to paint a clearer picture of the language they have discovered. They also say that understanding this language could be the key to unraveling the mysterious disappearance of the people who built the magnificent city of Teotihuacan almost 2,000 years ago.
The study “The Language of Teotihuacan Writing” was published in Current Anthropology.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
