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> I remember in school and in old textbooks hearing the question, “What happened to the Mayan people? They totally disappeared!” and at the same time reading th

> I remember in school and in old textbooks hearing the question, “What happened to the Mayan people? They totally disappeared!” and at the same time reading that there are dozens of Mayan languages spoken in the Yucatán to this day. These aren't technically incompatible; for a better-understood example, you can look at Turkey, which speaks the language of the long since dead Turks that conquered it without leaving any demographic impact. It would be accurate to say that the Turks completely disappeared from Turkey, at the same time that the region continues to speak Turkic languages. I think an analogous situation holds in Hungary.

alephnerd 2y ago
Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion. Turkic kingdoms ruled much of Anatolia for over a millennia, so Turkic languages spread rapidly due to it's prominence among that elite. Based on genetics, there were only a couple thousand Turkic people that lead the initial settlement. Languages can spread (and die out) rapidly. Look at the sinicization of Manchuria in the 19th century.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion. I don't really see why that would mean that Mayan didn't spread through elite diffusion?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Mayan Languages are a different story from Turkish and Magyar. There is a close genetic affinity between ancient and modern Mayans [0] that doesn't exist between Anatolian Turks and Turkmen, or Magyars and Khanty. The Mayans never died out - they remained in the Yucatán and what is now Guatemala to this day, and weren't fully conquered until the early 1700s. Furthermore, the language has always been alive and well because Spanish and Mezito settlers never tried settling in much of the Mayan region, because of how late they were conquered. Even today, Mayan groups like EZLN/Zapatistas have strong autonomy (and the guns to back it). It's also had an impact in the US, as most undocumented immigrants from Guatemala tend to be ethnic Mayans from the highlands, and can barely speak Spanish because Guatemala puts almost no money in rural development. This has drastically clogged the immigration court system as the number of Mayan-English translators is extremely limited (I think UIUC is the only university that still teaches modern Mayan due to it's training contract with the CIA). [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_genetics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_genetics

alephnerd 2y ago

Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion. Turkic kingdoms ruled much of Anatolia for over a millennia, so Turkic languages spread rapidly due to it's prominence among that elite. Based on genetics, there were only a couple thousand Turkic people that lead the initial settlement. Languages can spread (and die out) rapidly. Look at the sinicization of Manchuria in the 19th century.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion. I don't really see why that would mean that Mayan didn't spread through elite diffusion?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Mayan Languages are a different story from Turkish and Magyar. There is a close genetic affinity between ancient and modern Mayans [0] that doesn't exist between Anatolian Turks and Turkmen, or Magyars and Khanty. The Mayans never died out - they remained in the Yucatán and what is now Guatemala to this day, and weren't fully conquered until the early 1700s. Furthermore, the language has always been alive and well because Spanish and Mezito settlers never tried settling in much of the Mayan region, because of how late they were conquered. Even today, Mayan groups like EZLN/Zapatistas have strong autonomy (and the guns to back it). It's also had an impact in the US, as most undocumented immigrants from Guatemala tend to be ethnic Mayans from the highlands, and can barely speak Spanish because Guatemala puts almost no money in rural development. This has drastically clogged the immigration court system as the number of Mayan-English translators is extremely limited (I think UIUC is the only university that still teaches modern Mayan due to it's training contract with the CIA). [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_genetics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_genetics