Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo Guatemala

Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala William A. Saturno, et al. Science 311, 1281 (2006); DOI: 10.1126/science.1121745

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REPORTS 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

treatment of triple excitations) were performed using Molpro 2002.6. R. A. Kendall, T. H. Dunning Jr., R. J. Harrison, J. Chem. Phys. 96, 6796 (1992). H. C. Longuet-Higgins, Mol. Phys. 6, 445 (1963). The character table of the group G4 is given in (23). Y. Endo, H. Kohguchi, Y. Ohshima, Faraday Discuss. 97, 341 (1994). M. Iida, Y. Ohshima, Y. Endo, J. Chem. Phys. 94, 6989 (1991). Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science Online. J. A. Odutola, T. R. Dyke, J. Chem. Phys. 72, 5062 (1980). W. Klopper, J. G. C. M. van Duijneveldt-van de Rijdt, F. B. van Duijneveldt, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2, 2227 (2000). A. A. Nanayakkara, G. G. Balintkurti, I. H. Williams, J. Phys. Chem. 96, 3662 (1992). K. V. Chance et al., J. Mol. Spectrosc. 183, 418 (1997). K. Suma, W. Funato, Y. Sumiyoshi, Y. Endo, J. Chem. Phys. 122, 184302 (2005).

Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala William A. Saturno,1* David Stuart,2 Boris Beltra´n3 The ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala, contain a sample of Maya hieroglyphic writing dating to the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C. to 200 A.D.). The writing appears on preserved painted walls and plaster fragments buried within the pyramidal structure known as ‘‘Las Pinturas,’’ which was constructed in discrete phases over several centuries. Samples of carbonized wood that are closely associated with the writing have calibrated radiocarbon dates of 200 to 300 B.C. This early Maya writing implies that a developed Maya writing system was in use centuries earlier than previously thought, approximating a time when we see the earliest scripts elsewhere in Mesoamerica. esearch on the origins of Maya hieroglyphic writing has long been hindered by the paucity of good archaeological contexts and reliable dates for inscribed artifacts and monuments. With a few exceptions, examples of archaic Maya script appear on illicitly excavated objects that can be stylistically dated to no earlier than about 100 B.C. to 100 A.D., when writing seems to have been already well established elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Here we provide new evidence of early Maya writing preserved in the ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala. The ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala (Fig. 1) were identified in 2001 and include early wall paintings buried within a pyramidal structure today known as BLas Pinturas.[ These had been partially exposed by illicit digging a few years previously, and subsequent scientific excavations in Room 1 (as that location is now designated) have uncovered most of this important mural, dating to È100 B.C. (1–4) (figs. S6 to S10). Tunneling deeper into the Las Pinturas structure has since led to the discovery of other buildings with remains of painted decoration that are substantially older than the Room 1 murals.

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One example of this earlier painting comes from a block from a dismantled wall of the building that once stood on the platform of the Sub-V construction phase (Fig. 2). The Room 1 murals were painted on the Sub-I phase of the pyramid, that is, four construction episodes later than the Sub-V phase. The È4-m-high

29. M. J. Frisch et al., Gaussian 03, Revision C.02, Gaussian, Inc., (Wallingford, CT, 2004). 30. Molpro is a package of ab initio programs written by H.-J. Werner et al. 31. This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for priority research entitled ‘‘Radical Chain Reactions’’ (grant no.13127101). K.S. acknowledges the support of the Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists (JSPS No. 16-10895).

Supporting Online Material www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5765/1278/DC1 Materials and Methods Tables S1 to S4 Fig. S1 References 19 December 2005; accepted 31 January 2006 10.1126/science.1124022

Sub-V platform extends 28 m by 12 m at its base and supported three separate masonry rooms. The 2005 excavations established that its central room was richly decorated and painted with polychrome murals. The surviving doorjamb bears a colorful image of the Maize God, who is a central character in the mythological scenes of the later Room 1 murals (4). The line of script was possibly associated with this religiously themed scenery, but its original placement within the room is uncertain. We obtained accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates on five charcoal samples from sealed deposits in the three architectural strata (Sub-VI, Sub-V, and Sub-IV) in order to bracket the age of the painted blocks (Fig. 3). The first of these—from within the floor of the Sub-VI platform, the construction phase that was encapsulated by Sub-V construction— provides a maximum uncalibrated radiocarbon date of 2260 T 40 years before present (years B.P.) E400 to 200 B.C.; 2s (95% probability)

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12. Y. Ohshima, K. Sato, Y. Sumiyoshi, Y. Endo, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 1108 (2005). 13. C. S. Brauer et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 401, 420 (2005). 14. M. I. Lester, B. V. Pond, D. T. Anderson, L. B. Harding, A. F. Wagner, J. Chem. Phys. 113, 9889 (2000). 15. Y. Sumiyoshi, H. Katsnuma, K. Suma, Y. Endo, J. Chem. Phys. 123, 054324 (2005). 16. K. Suma, Y. Sumiyoshi, Y. Endo, J. Chem. Phys. 121, 8351 (2004). 17. The Gaussian 03 suite of programs (29) and Molpro 2002.6 suite of programs (30) were used for ab initio calculations. The centrifugal distortion constants were obtained by B3LYP/aug-cc-pVTZ [the Becke 3-parameterLee-Yang-Parr density functional method using Dunning’s correlation-consistent polarized triple split valence basis set with diffuse functions (18)] of Gaussian 03. Other ab initio calculations with SCF, B3LYP, and RCCSD(T) (the restricted single and double excitation coupled-cluster approach with noniterative perturbational

Fig. 1. Map. San Bartolo in relation to other Maya archaeological sites. [Drawing by J. Kowan and W. Saturno]

1

Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. 2Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. 3Escuela de Historia, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City, Guatemala. *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

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REPORTS Fig. 3. Las Pinturas. Architectural profile illustrating AMS radiocarbon dates for the construction sequence of the structure, the location of the Sub-V building phase, the painted glyph block, and the Room 1 mural. Scale in meters. [Drawing by J. Kowan and W. Saturno]

calibrated range^ (fig. S1). A sample from within the floor of Sub-V dates the construction of the room at 2200 T 60 years B.P. uncalibrated E390 to 80 B.C.; 2s (95% probability) calibrated range^ (fig. S2). The final three samples with dates of 2260 T 40 years B.P. uncalibrated E400 to 200 B.C.; 2s (95% probability) calibrated range^, 2180 T 40 years B.P. uncalibrated E370 to 100 B.C.; 2s (95% probability) calibrated range^, and 2150 T 40 years B.P. uncalibrated E360 to 60 B.C.; 2s (95% probability) calibrated range^ (figs. S3 to S5) surround the painted blocks and relate contextually to both the destruction of the Sub-V painted room and the subsequent construction of the Sub-IV platform above it. Taken together, these samples and those analyzed in association with the final two phases of construction imply that the text was painted between 300 and 200 B.C. The painted block bears a column of 10 hieroglyphs (Fig. 4). The text appears to be the end of a longer sequence of signs that continued above. All are painted in a thick black line on white plaster, apparently along a subtle pinkish-orange stripe that served as a guideline for the scribe. As with later examples of Maya writing discovered at San Bartolo, its decipherment remains a challenge (4). Later texts from the Room 1 murals are only partially readable, because sign forms appear considerably different from the familiar elements of later Maya script. The San Bartolo Room 1 paintings date centuries before the first fully legible Maya writing from around 250 to 300 A.D., and the signs of the Sub-V block are older still, containing archaic forms. The one fully recognizable glyph (pA7) is an early version of the sign that reads AJAW, a ubiquitous title in Maya texts that means Blord,[ Bnoble,[ or Bruler.[ It evidently formed part of a more extended title phase in reference to some person, either historical or mythical. Some signs have qualities that might be vaguely pictorial, such as pA2 with its suggestion of a hand holding a brush or alternatively a sharp bloodletter. Other signs are more abstract-looking forms, probably ancestral to components of later Maya script. In their overall appearance, the text bears

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some resemblance to the so-called Epi-Olmec script used by neighboring peoples to the west during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (5, 6). All examples of that script postdate the San Bartolo block, however, raising the question of the direction in which any influence may have flowed. Preclassic writing from the Maya area is scarce and has been difficult to date accurately. Most other examples are known from stone monuments found in surface or near-surface contexts or from illicitly excavated portable objects. One notable early inscription from El Mirador probably dates to no earlier than 100 BC on the basis of stylistic comparisons (7). Another carved monument with glyphs from El PortFn, Guatemala, may date to the first two or thee centuries B.C., on the basis of a single radiocarbon date not in direct association with the stone (8). The newly discovered San Bartolo text can now be firmly dated to the same general period, and its fine preservation offers an unusual look at the form that Maya script assumed in its early history.

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Fig. 4. Painted hieroglyphs. Scale drawing of Sub-V painted glyph block. Glyphs assigned preliminary column and row designations. Scale in centimeters (pA 1 to 10). [Drawing by D. Stuart]

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The San Bartolo text raises the question of the relation between Maya writing and other early script traditions in Mesoamerica. In the Preclassic era, writing systems were firmly established by about 400 B.C. among complex cultures in what is now Oaxaca and perhaps in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (9–12), although the dating of evidence for this remains controversial (13–15). It now appears that the Maya also participated in the Preclassic cultures of literacy, and at a much earlier date than previously believed. References and Notes 1. W. Saturno, Symbols (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Fall 2002), p. 3. 2. W. Saturno, D. Stuart, H. Escobedo, I. Graham, ‘‘Reonocimiento Arqueolo´gico y Conservacio´n de San Bartolo, Guatemala’’ (Instituto de Antropologı´a e Historia, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2001). 3. T. O’Neill, Natl. Geogr. Mag. 201, 70 (2002). 4. W. Saturno, K. Taube, D. Stuart, The Murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala, Part 1, The North Wall (Publ. 7, Ancient America, Barnardsville, NC, 2005). 5. F. Winfield Capitaine, La Estela 1 de La Mojarra, Veracruz (Publ. 16, Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, Washington, DC, 1988). 6. J. S. Justeson, T. Kaufman, Science 259, 1703 (1993). 7. R. D. Hansen, An Early Maya Text from El Mirador, Guatemala (Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, Washington, DC, 1991). 8. R. J. Sharer, D. W. Sedat, Archaeological Investigations in the Northern Maya Highlands (University Museum, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1987), pp. 49–73. 9. A. Caso, Handb. Mid. Am. Indians 3, 931 (1965). 10. J. Marcus, Annu. Rev. of Anthropol. 5, 35 (1976). 11. J. Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 41–42. 12. M. E. D. Pohl, K. O. Pope, C. von Nagy, Science 298, 1984 (2002). 13. R. Cahn, M. Winter, Indiana 13, 39 (1993). 14. S. D. Houston, in First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2005), p. 293. 15. K. V. Flannery, J. Marcus, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100, 11801 (2003). 16. Excavations by the Proyecto San Bartolo between 2002 and 2005 were supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant RZ- 50086); National Geographic Society, Committee for Research and Exploration (grants 7065-01, 7222-02, 7393-03, 7601-04, and

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Fig. 2. Glyph block. The Sub-V painted block in situ. [Photograph by B. Beltra´n]

REPORTS Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Instituto de Antropologı´a e Historia, and Departamento de Monumentos Prehispa´nicos for their support.

24 October 2005; accepted 21 December 2005 Published online 5 January 2006; 10.1126/science.1121745 Include this information when citing this paper.

Supporting Online Material www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1121745/DC1 Materials and Methods

Toward Automatic Reconstruction of a Highly Resolved Tree of Life Francesca D. Ciccarelli,1,2,3* Tobias Doerks,1* Christian von Mering,1 Christopher J. Creevey,1 Berend Snel,4 Peer Bork1,5† We have developed an automatable procedure for reconstructing the tree of life with branch lengths comparable across all three domains. The tree has its basis in a concatenation of 31 orthologs occurring in 191 species with sequenced genomes. It revealed interdomain discrepancies in taxonomic classification. Systematic detection and subsequent exclusion of products of horizontal gene transfer increased phylogenetic resolution, allowing us to confirm accepted relationships and resolve disputed and preliminary classifications. For example, we place the phylum Acidobacteria as a sister group of d-Proteobacteria, support a Gram-positive origin of Bacteria, and suggest a thermophilic last universal common ancestor. econstructing the phylogenetic relationships among all living organisms is one of the fundamental challenges in biology. Numerous attempts to derive a tree of life using various methods have been published Efor a review, see (1)^, and its principal existence has

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been questioned recently (2, 3). Moreover, even under the assumption of a tree of life, numerous groupings and taxonomic entities still remain heavily debated, and the advent of molecular and genomic data has increased the variety of classifications rather than reducing the problem (1).

Fig. 1. Overview of the procedure. The white boxes represent the major steps for building the pan-domain phylogeny presented here. Steps in gray represent automatable parts of the procedure that need to be carried out for including further species. For the 31 clusters of orthologous groups (COGs) used in the analysis, we manually derived 1:1 orthologs by removing mitochondrial and www.sciencemag.org

Figs. S1 to S10 References and Notes

Theoretical and practical limits to reconstructing a tree of life have been put forward, such as the insufficient amount of discriminating characters available, even in information-rich genomic data sets (4), and the computing resources required to cope with large numbers of species (1). Furthermore, there are factors that hamper accurate reconstruction of phylogenetic trees regardless of the methods used, such as sampling biases of species included (5) and dilution of phylogenetic signal by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) (6), the 1 European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany. 2Department of Experimental Oncology, European Institute of Oncology, Via Ripamonti 435, 20141 Milan, Italy. 3Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation, Fondazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Via Adamello 16, 20139 Milan, Italy. 4Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics, Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Toernooiveld 1, 6525 ED, Nijmegen, Netherlands. 5Max Delbru¨ck Centrum, 13092 Berlin-Buch, Germany.

*These authors contributed equally to this work. †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

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7721-04); Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (grants 01038 and 02039); Peabody Museum, Harvard University; Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections; American Philosophical Society; Annenberg Foundation; International Communities Foundation; Brigham Young University; and most importantly, the Reinhart Foundation. We also thank the Guatemalan

chloroplast paralogs from corresponding multiple alignments. We built domainspecific alignments by using corresponding proteins encoded by the 31 orthologs and aligned the resulting profiles. With this procedure, we maximized the number of positions of the global alignment and reduced the number of misaligned residues. For a detailed description of the methods, see (8).

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