‘Lost’ language found on back of 400-year-old letter
Native Peruvian
language rediscovered in remains of church
Brian Handwerk
Notes on the back of a 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously
unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru, an
archaeologist says.
Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the
battered piece of paper was pulled from the ruins of an ancient Spanish
colonial church in 2008.
Translations scribbled on the back
of a Spanish author’s letter. Photograph courtesy Jeffrey Quil |
But a team of scientists and linguists has only recently revealed the
importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter.
The early 17th-century author had translated Spanish numbers - uno,
dos, tres - and Arabic numerals into a mysterious language never seen by
modern scholars.
“Even though (the letter) doesn’t tell us a whole lot, it does tell
us about a language that is very different from anything we’ve ever
known - and it suggests that there may be a lot more out there,”
said project leader and an archaeologist at Harvard’s Peabody Museum
of Archaeology and Ethnology .
‘Lost’ language one of two already known
The newfound native language may have borrowed from Quechua, a
language still spoken by indigenous peoples of Peru, Quilter said.
But it was clearly a unique tongue, and likely one of two known only
by the mention of their names in contemporary texts: Quingnam and
Pescadora - “language of the fishers.”
Some scholars suggest the two are in fact the same tongue that had
been misidentified as distinct languages by early Spanish scribes.
Also, the writings include translated numbers, which means that the
lost language’s numerical system was a ten-based, or decimal system -
like English.
While the Inca used a ten-based system, many other cultures did not:
the Maya, for example, used a base of 20, according to Quilter.
Church misfortune is archaeologist’s gain. The letter was found
during excavations of the Magdalena de Cao Viejo church at the El Brujo
Archaeological Complex in northern Peru. (The National Geographic
Society, which owns National Geographic News, has sponsored fieldwork at
the site in the past.) The church served a nearby town once inhabited by
indigenous people forcibly relocated to the site by Spaniards, probably
for purposes of conversion to Christianity, Quilter said.
The tantalizing fragment is just one of hundreds of historic papers
recovered at the site, which has been well preserved by the extremely
arid climate - and also by the church’s collapse, Quilter added.
“Archaeologists live on other people’s misfortunes,” Quilter said.
The Spanish colonialists “had the misfortune of having the church
collapse - we think probably in the mid-to-late 17th century - which
trapped the library or office where they kept their papers.”
Language hints at diversity of cultures
Finding the new language at Magdalena de Cao Viejo helps to reinforce
the rich diversity of cultures found in early colonial Americas, Quilter
said.
“You know that Chinese curse, ‘may you live in interesting times’ -
well that was an extremely interesting time,” he said.
“We often think of a confrontation of Spanish and Native Americans,
but in almost every location, from Massachusetts to Peru, it was a
confrontation of a much more diverse group of people.”
For instance, colonialists from many parts of Europe were grouped
into ‘the Spanish,’ and in the Americas there were many people who spoke
different languages and had different customs, he noted.
“It really shows how rich and diverse that world was.”
National
Geographic News |