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A Phonetic Version of the Maya Glyph for North

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael P. Closs
Michael P. Closs*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada KIN 6N5
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Abstract

The symbolic variant of the Maya glyph for north is claimed to be a phonetic construction xa-ma-n(a) generating the Yucatec term xaman, "north." The reading supports the notion that Maya directional symbolism was related to the horizon and disagrees with recent revisionist theory that such symbolism was related to the path of the sun across the sky and through the underworld.

Type
Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 386 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1988

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References

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