Okay, the exclamations points are unnecessary,but they really felt needed. As a poet, I feel free to (ab)use language to suit myself. After all ,it worked for the hot-sheets*.
In the Secret of the Su , an adventure I have tentatively dated as occurring in April 1942, Clark Savage and his gang of Merry Men encounter a remnant of the long-lost Mayan civilization...living in the Everglades.
They speak a language which Doc can partially understand and identifys as 'Yucatan Basic...pre-Mayan.'.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that Doc himself speaks two forms of 'Mayan': a formal version used by the priesthood of the Lost Valley, and a common version. While the Lost Valley language is usually referred to as 'Mayan' (ignoring the 'Incan' from 'Incan in Gray') , we have to be mindful that these labels were assigned nearly a century ago, and may not accurately conform to the real tongues spoke by the Mayans or the 'pre-Mayan Yucatan people'.
So where am I going with this?
Well, the report of Purepecha DNA found in Georgia / North Carolina!
The Purepacha were one the of the major pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, a high-technology people with copper smelting and stepped pyramids. Their language Tarascan is spoken today by about a quarter-million people (according to Wikipedia) and is part of the Chibchan family of languages...and yes, the Chibchan languages seem to have pre-dated the Mayan.
Of course, there is a lot of 'Mayan' variants, which makes the 'High 'and "Low" versions spoken by Doc difficult to pin down without any examples. If we could just identify Hidalgo...
Now to add to the fun, its been argued for a while that the rock terraces found at Brasstown Bald in Georgia is the ruins of the fabled city of Yupaha. People are willing to argue that the ruins date from around 1000 AD, which would put them at the end of the Mayan civilizations peak. Problem is, nothing has been dug up that looks definitively Mayan; or for that matter, Purepacha.
But its hard to argue with the DNA.
The deportation/genocide that befell the Creek Confederation could certainly have provided the impetus for Purepacha descendants to flee deep into the 'impassable' Everglades. Their home is described as being dug into a natural coral mound, within hiking distance of the town of Everglades.
Everglades (now 'Everglades City') is on the coast, up against the edge of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and the Everglades National Park. Its billed as the tourist entrance to the Ten Thousand Islands. Population of 479 people in 2010, and the jungle is still tangled and secluded enough to be a major drug smuggling hub through the 1970's and 1980's.
Secluded enough that the Su may still live in their tunneled homes, keeping themselves hidden away from the Global Village.
*Weekly World News. Thank you, MiB.
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