The Xinca never had a chance

Hearing about Ilopango, and considering its [lack of] effect abroad; I really should look closer to home, also supposedly literate. That's central El Salvador during the Classic Maya heyday.

Ilopango and the "Our Saviour" volcano both erupted during this time. We've now dated the former to about AD 431: longcount 8.19.15.*.*. The latter went up AD 600ish, 9.8.0-3.*.*; that one doesn't seem as well constrained.

Where Ilopango was an epic blast, affecting the whole Southern Hemisphere (tho' not so much the North); the latter Loma Caldera was more a Vesuvius. As a Vesuvius it did blanket the local villages and, here, the archaeologists have been hard at work at the "Jewel of Cerén".

These cultures are considered Maya; I don't know about their languages. Due north is Copán; west, Tazumal alias Chalchuapa. After all this San Andrés picked up, as a trade entrepôt.

What I don't hear about, here, is literacy. Nearby Copán etched out a LOT of monuments. I haven't heard about monuments in San Andrés nor even Tazumal. Copán for its part faced north, somewhat famously controlling Quiriguá downstream until 18 Rabbit got killed AD 738; Copán didn't care about the Pacific.

Quiriguá might not have been Maya at first, although its élite spoke the Chorti - Copán for its part still does. I cannot help but feel that El Salvador spoke different Maya, in the Quiché and Mam branch. Nahua came later; Lenca and Cacaopera cluster east of here, as in Honduras. And even Maya did not extend to the San Salvador volcanoes, now Nahua and Spanish. I am told that the local toponyms are Xinca. Xinca culture was inferior to Maya; the Xinca language, where it held on (west of here), borrowed Maya technical vocabulary.

At a guess, the eruptions AD 431 and 600ish cleared out the whole area, and made difficult for to resettle. When the Nahua-speaking Pipil came, when was decidedly Postclassic, they found few-to-none locals to oppose them.

I'd also not hold out hope that we'll find dramatic pyramids or monuments as we find in Copán or will probably find in Tazumal. Toponyms are all we'll get from the eastern Xinca culture.