Maya hieroglyphics is the common name for the system of writing which was used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of the Mesoamerican region. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Mayan date back to the 3rd century BCE,[1] and it was in continuous use up until shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century CE. It reflects the language of the Maya peoples spoken at that time, known generally today as the Classic Maya language, although there are indications that this Classic language had regional and time-period variants which are noted in the script. It is essentially a logosyllabic system consisting of a highly elaborate set of glyphs which were laboriously painted on ceramics, walls or bark-paper codices, carved in wood or stone, or molded in stucco. A writing system, also called a script, is used to visually record a language with symbols. ... The term Pre-Columbian is used to refer to the cultures of the New World in the era before significant European influence. ... The Maya civilization is a historical Mesoamerican civilization, which extended throughout the northern Central American region which includes the present-day nations of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Yucatán peninsula states of Quintana Roo, Campeche... Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. ... // Events The first two Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome over dominance in western Mediterranean Rome conquers Spain Gaulish migration to Macedonia, Thrace and Galatia 281 BCE Antiochus I Soter, on the assassination of his father Seleucus becomes emperor of the Seleucid empire. ... Conquistador (meaning Conqueror in the Spanish language) is the term used to refer to the soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who achieved the Conquista (this Spanish term is generally accepted by historians), i. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... The Maya peoples constitute a diverse range of the Native American peoples of southern Mexico and northern Central America. ... The Classic Maya language is the oldest historically attested member of the Maya language family. ... A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. ... first page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for book; plural codices) is a handwritten book from late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

An inscription in Maya hieroglyphics from the site of Naranjo, relating to the reign of king Itzamnaaj K'awil, 784-810.

Knowledge of the Maya writing system continued into the early colonial era and reportedly a few of the early Spanish priests who went to Yucatán learned it. However, as part of his campaign to eradicate pagan rites, Bishop Diego de Landa ordered the destruction of all written Maya works, including a library full of bark-paper codices. Later, seeking to use their native language to convert the Maya to Christianity, he derived what he believed to be a Maya alphabet. Although the Maya did not actually write alphabetically, nevertheless he recorded a glossary of Maya sounds and related symbols, which much later became a key resource in deciphering the Maya script. He was also involved in creating a Latin orthography for the Yucatec Maya language (meaning that he created a system for writing Maya languages in the Latin alphabet). This was the first such Latin orthography compiled for all of the still-living Maya languages, which number at least 30. Download high resolution version (191x630, 54 KB)Naranjo, Peten, Guatemala. ... Download high resolution version (191x630, 54 KB)Naranjo, Peten, Guatemala. ... Inscription relating to the reign of king Itzamnaaj Kawil, 784-810. ... Events August 31 - Paul IV abdicates as Patriarch of Constantinople December 25 - Tarasius elected Patriarch of Constantinople The Japanese capital moved away from Nara. ... Events October 1 - A man with a sword makes an attempt on emperor Nicephorus Is life. ... Yucatán is the name of one of the 31 states of Mexico, located on the north of the Yucatán Peninsula. ... Diego de Landa Calderón (1524 – 1579) was Bishop of Yucatán. ... Maya codices (singular codex) are books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, using the Maya hieroglyphic script. ... Decipherment is the analysis of documents written in ancient languages, where the language is unknown, or knowledge of the language has been lost. ... The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ... Yucatec Maya is a Maya language spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula, northern Belize and parts of Guatemala. ... The Mayan languages are a family of related languages spoken from South-Eastern Mexico through northern Central America as far south as Honduras. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

Only four Maya codices are known to survive to modern times. Most surviving texts in Maya hieroglyphics are to be found on pottery recovered from Maya tombs, or from monuments and stelae erected in sites which were mostly long-abandoned or buried before the arrival of the Spanish. Maya codices (singular codex) are books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, using the Maya hieroglyphic script. ... The Taj Mahal in Agra (Uttar Pradesh, India) Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating an important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. ... Stele is also a concept in plant biology. ...

Knowledge of the writing system was lost, probably by the end of the 16th century. Renewed interest in it was sparked by published accounts of ruined Maya sites in the 19th century. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The decipherment of the writing was a long and laborious process. 19th century and early 20th century investigators managed to decode the Maya numbers and portions of the text related to astronomy and the Maya calendar, but understanding of most of the rest long eluded scholars. In the 1960s progress revealed the dynastic records of Maya rulers. Since the early 1980s it has been demonstrated that most of the previously unknown symbols form a syllabary, and progress in reading the Maya writing has advanced rapidly since. The Pre-Columbian Maya civilization used a vigesimal (base-20) numeral system. ... Lunar astronomy: the large crater is Daedalus, photographed by the crew of Apollo 11 as they circled the Moon in 1969. ... The Maya calendar is actually a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ...

The Maya may seem to have inherited some elements, and perhaps the entire basis, of their ancient writing system from the Olmecs (Schele & Freidel, 1990; Soustelle, 1984), which was significantly modified and expanded by the Maya of the Pre-Classic era. Pre-Classic texts are less numerous and less well understood by archaeologists than the later Classic and Post-Classic texts. (However, the Epi-Olmec script once thought of as a possible direct ancestor of the Mayan script is now known to be several centuries too recent, and may instead be a decendant.) Other related and nearby Mesoamerican cultures of the period were also heirs to the Olmec writing system, and developed parallel systems which shared key attributes (such as the base-twenty numerical system written with a system of bars and dots). However, it is generally believed that the Maya developed the only complete writing system in Mesoamerica, meaning that they were the only civilization that could write everything they could say. The Olmec were an ancient people living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, roughly in what are the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ... A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. ... Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. ...

The linguistic breakthroughs

What was only in retrospect widely-recognized as a major breakthrough was made by Yuri Knorosov in the 1950s, when he published a paper arguing that the so-called "de Landa alphabet" contained in Bishop Diego de Landa's manuscript Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán was actually made of syllabic, rather than alphabetic symbols. As Knorosov's early essays contained few new readings, and the Soviet editors added propagandistic claims to the effect that Knorosov was using a peculiarly "Marxist-Leninist" approach to decipherment, many Western Mayanists simply dismissed Knorosov's work. However in the 1960s more came to see the syllabic approach as potentially fruitful, and possible phonetic readings for symbols whose general meaning was understood from context began to be developed. Prominent older epigrapher J. Eric S. Thompson was one of the last major opponents of Knorosov and the syllabic approach. Thompson's disagreements are sometimes said to have held back advances in decipherment. Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov (Russian: Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов; b. ... // Events and trends This map shows two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1959. ... Diego de Landa (1524 - 1579) was Bishop of the Yucatán. ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... State motto (Russian): Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Transliterated: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!) (Translated: Workers of the world, unite!) Capital Moscow Official language None; Russian (de facto) Government Federation of Socialist republics/ Communist state Area  - Total  - % water Largest on the planet 22,402,200 km² Approx. ... Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism (the forerunner of Communism) and is a branch in its own right (it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ... Mayanist is a term which has been in widespread use from the late 19th century onwards, to refer to scholars who have specialised in research and study of the Central American pre-Columbian Maya civilization. ... John Eric Sidney Thompson (31 December 1898 - 9 September 1975) was an English archeologist and epigrapher, perhaps the most eminent student of pre-Columbian Maya civilization of the mid 20th century. ...

However, it was the combination of the work of Knorosov with a historically-oriented approach first outlined by Russian-American scholar Tatiana Proskouriakoff that truly set in motion the winds of change in Maya decipherment. In 1959, examining what she called "a peculiar pattern of dates" on stone monument inscriptions at the Classic Maya site of Piedras Negras, Proskouriakoff determined that these represented events in the life-span of an individual, rather than relating to religion, astronomy, or prophesy, as held by the "old school" exemplified by Thompson. This proved to be true of many Maya inscriptions, and revealed the Maya epigraphic record to be one relating actual histories of ruling individuals: dynastic histories similar in nature to those recorded in literate human cultures throughout the world. Suddenly, the Maya entered written history. 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Piedras Negras is the modern name for a ruined city of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization located on the north bank of the Usumacinta River in the Peten department of Guatemala. ... Epigraphy (Greek, επιγραφή - written upon) is the study of inscriptions engraved into stone or other permanent materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them as to cultural context and date, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them. ...

Although it was now clear what was on many Maya inscriptions, they still could not literally be read. However, further progress was made during the 1960s and 1970s, using a multitude of approaches including pattern analysis, de Landa's "alphabet," Knorosov's breakthroughs, and others. In the story of Maya decipherment, the work of archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers, linguists, and anthropologists cannot be separated. All contributed to a process that was truly and essentially multidisciplinary. Key figures included David Kelley, Ian Graham, Gilette Griffin, and Michael Coe. Archaeology, archeology or archæology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech/discourse) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist or linguistician. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ...

Dramatic breakthroughs occurred in the 1970's - in particular, at the first Mesa Redonda de Palenque, a scholarly conference organized by Merle Greene Robertson at the Classic Maya site of Palenque held in December, 1973. A working group was led by Linda Schele, an art historian and epigrapher at the University of Texas at Austin, which included Floyd Lounsbury, a linguist from Yale, and Peter Mathews, then an undergraduate student of David Kelley's at the University of Calgary (whom Kelley sent because he could not attend). In one afternoon they managed to decipher the first dynastic list of Maya kings - the ancient kings of the city of Palenque. By determining a key sign for a royal title that prefaced many of the royal names (initially read as "makina" but now as "kinich"), the group was able to identify and "read" the life histories (from birth, to accession to the throne, to death) of six kings of Palenque. The Palace, Ruins of Palenque Palenque is a Maya archeological site not far from the Usumacinta River in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, about 130 km. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Linda Schele (1942 - 18 April 1998 was a noted expert in the field of Maya epigraphy and iconography. ... The University of Texas at Austin, often called UT or Texas, is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ... The University of Calgary is a university of approximately 23,500 full time and 4,500 part time students, totalling almost 28,000 students, located in the north-western part of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (pop. ...

From that point, progress proceeded at an exponential pace, not only in the decipherment of the Maya glyphs, but also towards the construction of a new, historically-based understanding of Maya civilization. The "old school" continued to resist the results of the new scholarship for some time. A decisive event which helped to turn the tide in favor of the new approach occurred in 1986, at an exhibition entitled "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art". It was organized by InterCultura and the Kimbell Art Museum and curated by Schele and Yale art historian Mary Miller. This exhibition and attendant catalogue - and international publicity - revealed to a wide audience the new world which had latterly been opened up by progress in decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics. Not only could a real history of ancient America now be read and understood, but the light it shed on the material remains of the Maya showed them to be real, recognisable individuals. They stood revealed as a people with a history like that of all other human societies: full of wars, dynastic struggles, shifting political alliances, complex religious and artistic systems, expressions of personal property and ownership, and so forth. Moreover, the new interpretation, as the exhibition demonstrated, made sense out of many works of art whose meaning had been unclear, and showed how the material culture of the Maya represented a fully-integrated cultural system and world view. Gone was the old Thompson view of the Maya as peaceable astronomers without conflict or other attributes characteristic of all other human societies. 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... InterCultura, Inc. ... The Kimbell Art Museum is situated in the Cultural District of Fort Worth, Texas. ... Mary Miller is the master of Saybrook College at Yale University and the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art. ...

However, three years later in 1989, a final counter-assault was launched by supporters who were still resisting the modern decipherment interpretation. This occurred at a conference at Dumbarton Oaks. It did not directly attack the methodology or results of decipherment, but instead contended that the ancient Maya texts had indeed been read but were "epiphenomenal". This argument was extended from a populist perspective to say that the deciphered texts tell us only about the concerns and beliefs of the society's elite, and not about the ordinary Maya. Michael Coe in opposition to this idea described "epiphenomenal" as: 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Dumbarton Oaks is a nineteenth-century mansion located in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC. It houses the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a leading center for scholarship in Byzantine studies, Pre-Columbian studies and the history of landscape architecture. ...

• a ten penny word meaning that Maya writing is only of marginal application since it is secondary to those more primary institutions - economics and society - so well studied by the dirt archaeologists.

Linda Schele noted following the conference that this is like saying that the inscriptions of ancient Egypt - or the writings of Greek philosophers or historians - do not reveal anything important about their cultures. Most written documents in most cultures tell us about the elite, because in most cultures in the past, they were the ones who could write (or could have things written down by scribes or inscribed on monuments).

Progress in decipherment continues at a rapid pace today, and it is generally agreed by scholars that over 90 percent of the Maya texts can now be read with reasonable accuracy.

Current leaders in the field of interpreting Maya culture and Maya decipherment include many archaeologists, epigraphers, linguists, and art historians. Key names working at present are:

• David Friedel at SMU,
• David Stuart at the University of Texas,
• Nicolai Grube in Hamburg,
• William Fash at Harvard,
• Diane Chase and Arlan Chase at the University of Central Florida,
• Steven Houston at Brigham Young University,
• Arthur Demarest at Vanderbilt,
• Robert Sharer at the University of Pennsylvania,
• William Sanders of Pennsylvania State University,
• Marc Zender of Harvard University
• linguists Nicholas Hopkins and Katherine Josserand,

and many others, including a growing number of scholars in Latin America, in the nations of the Maya area. William Sanders is a statistician at the University of Tennessee who discovered how to measure a teacher’s effect on student performance by tracking the progress of students against themselves over the course of their school career with their assignment to various teachers classes. ...

Much of the classic era writings seem to be directly ancestral to the Chorti language. The same language appears to have been used throughout the Maya classical period and throughout the geographical reach of the Maya, even when the local language was different, although local influences of varying degrees have been detected. The Chorti language (Chorti) is a langauge of the Mayan language family. ...

References

• Schele, Linda & Freidel, David (1990). A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, New York: William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0688112048.

• Soustelle, Jacques (1984). The Olmecs: The Oldest Civilization in Mexico, New York: Doubleday and Co. ISBN 0385172494.

• Coe, Michael D. (1999). Breaking the Maya Code (rev.), New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. ISBN 0500281335.

• Schele, Linda & Miller, Mary (1986). The Blood of Kings: Ritual and Dynasty in Maya Art, Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum. ISBN 0807612782.

See also

• Mayan languages

Mayan languages constitute a language family of related languages which are spoken in Mesoamerica, from southeastern Mexico to northern Central America, and as far south as Honduras. ...

External links

• Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs by Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke

• A Preliminary Classic Maya-English/English-Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings by Eric Boot

• FAMSI resources on Maya Hieroglyphic writing