During the past few months, we have identified numerous Chontal Maya words and town names in the Hichiti language that don't appear in Mvskoke. Both Chiaha and Altamaha are Chontal Maya words. The Chontal Mayas were the sailors and merchants of the Mesoamerican world. They built true sailing ships, very similar in size and construction to Viking longships. They also did most of the slave raiding for the Classic Period Maya. We think that the Chontal Maya slave raids are what depopulated the portions of Georgia below the Fall Line between 600 AD and 750 AD. Later, between 900 AD and 1000 AD, either Chontal merchants or escaped Maya slaves returned to the lower Southeast and set up trading stations - resulting in their mixed heritage offspring become the hereditary elite. Chontal and Highland Mayas and Hitchiti's look very much alike. The Yucateca Maya looked very different than these peoples. The Chontal appear to be the descendants of the Olmecs. I have found everyone of the glyphs of the Olmec syllabary in art created in Etowah, but nothing that remotely looks like Maya from the northern Yucatan. Well, that's where we are at now! Richard