From: yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology.mesoamerican,sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: Shang script among Olmecs
Date: 18 Nov 1996 18:04:39 GMT

Dear friends and opponents in this group. 

I'm reposting here an old post of mine from over a month ago. Now, this
is a thread about Shang script. I'm not quite sure if the Shang are
related in any way to the Shih-chai Shan culture from China (4th to 1st
centuries bce). Chronologically they are quite apart. Perhaps someone may
be able to provide some info here. But below you will find some rather
obscure but very curious info about the links of the latter with the
Americas.

I'm posting this in the hope that this information may be somehow
relevant to the current research about the Shang-Olmec links. I'm making
no claims here -- just providing the refs... 

I wrote on Oct 7:

"Such evidence as exists is extremely intriguing and deserves further
investigation. I hope someone can research these matters further." 

Well, folks, it's happening! People are researching these matters
further, as US NEWS & WR indicates! (And, also, the NY TIMES.)

Of course I don't think that the articles I wrote about these matters in
the newsgroups influenced any of the big media people. But sometimes
these weird synchronicities are interesting... 

Cheers,

Yuri.


Subject:      Chinese ideograms and Mayan characters
From:         yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky)
Date:         1996/10/07
Newsgroups:   sci.archaeology.mesoamerican,sci.archaeology

Dear Peter [Van Rossum],

A while back, I promised to send you some refs in regard to the
theories that the Mayan writing system may have been based on some
Chinese prototypes. I have investigated this matter further, and I
must say that I found quite little work that has been done in this
area. Nevertheless, there's some...

Joseph Needham writes in TRANS-PACIFIC ECHOES:

      That the pictographic and ideographic principle of the
      scripts of the Meso-American people evoked the parallels
      of the Old World, has been appreciated for nearly two
      centuries. In 1813 Alexander von Humboldt wrote [about
      it] ... (p. 16)

Also:

      ...the pictographic/ideographic principles might not
      alone attain our collocative level [indicating
      diffusion] if it were not for the squareness of the Maya
      glyphs so much recalling Chinese, the reading order
      which goes downwards in nearly all cases, and sometimes
      right to left, and even indentations, recalling Chinese
      practices. On the pictographic side some of the writings
      from the Shih-chai Shan culture (4th to 1st centuries
      bce) are notably similar to those of the Aztec codices
      (Fig. 1) [the illustration at the back of the book shows
      some Chinese ideograms remarkably similar to some of the
      Meso-American ones] By the same token, Meso-American
      cylinder-seals recall those so common in ancient
      Babylonia and the Indus Valley. (p. 16)

Needham gives the following further refs:

Chiang Khang-Hu, ON CHINESE STUDIES, (Shanghai: Com. Press, 1934).
p. 380.

E. C. Bunker, THE TIEN CULTURE AND SOME ASPECTS OF ITS RELATINSHIP
TO THE DONG-SON CULTURE, in EARLY CHINESE ART AND ITS POSSIBLE
INFLUENCE IN THE PACIFIC BASIN, ed. N. Barnard, (1974), p. 296.

R. C. Rudolph, REGIONAL REPORT: CHINA MAINLAND -- AN IMPORTANT DONG-
SON SITE IN YUNNAN [SHIH-CHAI SHAN], in ASIAN PERSPECTIVES
(Honolulu), 4 (no. 1), (1961), p. 47.

As you may notice, these books are not recent (except for Needham's),
and may not necessarily be easily available. Nobody said these 
theories are fashionable, and that they can find publishers easily. 
But they exist. 

Also, I would like to make it clear that I never claimed that
decisive proof exists that Mayan writing was derived from Asian
prototypes. All I said was that _some people_ suggested it. Such
evidence as exists is extremely intriguing and deserves further
investigation. I hope someone can research these matters further.

Yours truly,

Yuri.

             #%    Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto    %#
  --  a webpage like any other...  http://www.io.org/~yuku  --

The world is governed more by appearance than by realities, so
that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as it
is to know it              =========            Daniel Webster