La Mojarra

In 1986, La Mojarra Stela 1 was pulled from the Acula River, midway between Cerro de las Mesas and Tres Zapotes in the Olmec heartland. The inscription recorded on the monument was written in a Mixe-Zoquean language and was deciphered by the linguists John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman in 1992. La Mojarra Stela 1 dates to approximately AD 150, and records a series of calendrical statements, astronomical information, rituals of accession, bloodletting, and warfare events. In addition, according to Justeson and Kaufman's interpretation, the inscription describes an event in which a ruler donned the costume of a bird as a precursor to his declaration of rulership. This description may be reflected in the imagery on the front of the monument, which depicts the La Mojarra ruler dressed in an elaborate bird headdress and feathered cape.

Such textual information also provides a striking counterpart to the scenes of bird dancing on monuments from sites such as Izapa. In addition, hieroglyphs recorded in the text of La Mojarra Stela 1 compare closely to glyphic elements that appear on monuments of bird dancers at Izapa. For instance, the glyph read as "macaw" by Justeson and Kaufman on La Mojarra Stela 1 closely resembles the glyphic form that appears in the costume of the winged figure at the top of Izapa Stela 4.

Bibliography:

Justeson, John S. and Terrence Kaufman. 1993. "A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing." In Science 259: 1703-1711.

Kappelman, Julia Guernsey. 1997. Of Macaw and Men: Late Preclassic Cosmology and Political Ideology in Izapan-style Monuments. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.

Winfield Capitaine, Fernando. 1988. "La Estela 1 de La Mojarra, Veracruz, Mexico." In Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, no. 16. Washington, D.C.: Center for Maya Research.