Timucua
Decoding and translating 400-year-old texts to understand the lost Timucua language and the extinct people who were writing it down.
When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts.
In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the people who were writing it down.
Content note: in the episode there is mention of slavery, genocide, and mistreatment of the indigenous people of what is now called United States of America.
Also, if you have trouble hearing anything in this episode - or any of the other ones - remember there are transcripts of every episode at theallusionist.org/transcripts. And if you hear snoring during this episode, it’s an interviewee’s dog, it is not me.
