Career
Sapper spent over twelve years (1888-1895) traveling through much of Central America, and in the process published a number of scientific works on aspects from vulcanology to Mesoamerican languages to descriptions and maps of Maya archaeological sites. Sapper"s contributions to the study of Mesoamerican languages include his initial proposal, made in a 1912 paper, which surmised that the highland regions of Chiapas and Guatemala was the location from which the Mayan languages and the Maya peoples later diversified. The assessment of a number of modern linguists places the likely home of the Proto-Mayan language as being centered on the Cuchumatanes highlands of Guatemala, with a subsequent early occupancy of the Chiapas highlands proper.