THE TAJIN TOTONAC PART 1 — KELLY AND PALERM 



15 



meters distant, certainly has major bearing on 

 any local historical reconstruction. Evidently it 

 is not, as once was believed, an "Aztec" site, but 

 one with perceptible Tula affiliations. Essentially 

 later than Tajin, its precise dating has not yet been 

 established (Garcia Payon, 1917, p. 303; Ekholm, 

 letter of Oct. 29, 1948). At the moment, it is im- 

 possible to say whether it was founded as a local 

 Toltec colony prior to the fall of Tula, when the 

 latter still was vigorous culturally, or whether 

 it was settled by Toltecs who moved from the pla- 

 teau when Tula was abandoned. In any case, 

 the presence of such a Toltec-affiliated site at no 

 great distance from Tajin indicates that major 

 influences from a post-Teotihuacan horizon in the 

 central highlands must have reached the Papantla 

 zone. 



Interpretation of the early phases of local 

 archeology is closely linked to the so-called "01- 

 meca" problem, and there seems to be a general 

 impression that the style of Tajin is related, 

 directly or otherwise, to the "Olmeca" or La Venta 

 culture. Covarrubias (1942, p. 48) sees a "dis- 

 tant but palpable" connection between the latter 

 and the "so-called Totonac style." Caso (p. 46) 

 goes so far as to say that "this great culture 

 [Olmeca-La Venta] . . . without doubt is the 

 mother of other cultures, such as the Maya, the 

 Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, that of El Tajin, and 

 others." 



Of more specific affiliations, some investigators 

 feel that not only is Tajin in large part contem- 

 poraneous with Teotihuacan, but that the two cul- 

 tures are intimately related, ceramically and archi- 

 tecturally (Garcia Payon, 1947, p. 305). In fact, 

 it has been suggested that the Totonac — either as a 

 dominant group or as a slave element — were pres- 

 ent during the building of Teotihuacan (Jimenez 

 Moreno, 1942 b, p. 141 ; Garcia Payon, 1943, p. 20) . 

 Krickeberg (pp. 141-145) has made a valiant ef- 

 fort to summarize Teotihuacan-Totonac relation- 

 ships ; more recently, Jimenez Moreno has investi- 

 gated the problem anew, but his material has not 

 been published. It is highly desirable that infor- 

 mation concerning such a basic relationship be put 

 on record, the more especially since the resem- 

 blances are not obvious, at least to us, and inas- 

 much as a considerable amount of archeological 

 evidence has accumulated since Krickeberg's re- 

 port was written. 



Logically, the alleged Teotihuacan-Tajin resem- 

 blances are explicable, at least in part, by the La 

 Venta background, which presumably underlies 

 both cultures. La Venta provides a common 

 bond — whether Teotihuacan and Tajin are re- 

 garded as distinct offshoots from the common cul- 

 tural tradition, or whether Tajin is regarded as La 

 Venta derived, via Teotihuacan. So much for the 

 current views, in very general terms, concerning 

 the basic affiliations of the Tajin archeological 

 site. 



Opinion is divided concerning the speech of the 

 builders of Tajin. Naturally, there is no assurance 

 that they were related linguistically to the modern 

 Totonac; theoretically, the latter might well be 

 recent intruders in a zone formerly occupied by 

 peoples of other affiliation. 



Nevertheless, the linguistic distribution is sug- 

 gestive. The island of Huastec speech, just to 

 the north of the Totonac, long has been recognized 

 as of Mayan affinity. And for many years it has 

 been suspected that the contiguous Tepehua and 

 Totonac were related to each another (Starr, p. 

 264; Krickeberg, p. 28). Recently, this relation- 

 ship has been verified (McQuown, p. 37). More- 

 over, McQuown repeats anew the old impression 

 that Totonac may be allied to Maya. Concretely, 

 he suggests that Totonac-Tepehua and Mixe- 

 Zoque, which comprise the Totonac-Zoquean fam- 

 ily, are in turn to be regarded as one of the major 

 divisions of a super-Mayan, or macro-Mayance 

 family. 



In view of the above, the interpretation sug- 

 gested by Jimenez Moreno (1942 a, b) appears 

 plausible. Approaching the problem from the 

 viewpoint of the "Olmeca," he has shown that a 

 variety of peoples, at different times, have borne 

 this name. He suggests that the earliest group, 

 which he calls pre-Olmeca, is to be identified with 

 the La Venta archeological horizon and with May- 

 oid speech. His next group, the proto-Olmeca, 

 would be Totonac-Zoque in speech, and chrono- 

 logically would correspond to the earlier occupa- 

 tions at Teotihuacan and Tajin. Successively, 

 "Olmeca" refers to other groups of peoples, which 

 do not, at the moment, concern us. 



In summary, we seem to be dealing with a de- 

 velopment which is centered along the Gulf 

 coast. Culturally, it may be Olmeca-La Venta 

 derived; linguistically, it presumably is macro- 



