Otomi people

Otomi peoples in pre-Hispanic times

By the fifth millennium B.C.E., the Otomi people formed a large group. The diversification of the languages and their geographic expansion from the valley of Tehuacán (currently in the state of Puebla) must have occurred after the domestication of the Mesoamerican agricultural, composed of maize, beans and chili. This is established on the basis that there is a large number of cognates that exist in the Otomi languages in the repertoire of words alluding to agriculture. After the development of emerging agriculture, the proto-Otomanguean legion gave rise to two distinct languages that constitute the antecedents of the present-day eastern and western groups of the Otomi family. Following the linguistic evidence, it seems likely that the Oto-Pames—members of the western branch—arrived in the Valley of Mexico around the fourth millennium B.C.E. and that, contrary to what some authors maintain, they did not migrate from the north but from the south.