Location of some scripts

Meso-American scriptsHypothetical Family

treeS.R. Fischer,2001

Olmec 1500-400 BCE

Maya pre-classic 2000 BCE-100 CEMaya classic 100-600 CEMaya post classic >900 CEAztec 1200-1500 CE

Zapotec 700 BCE–1521 CE

Site of Olmec civilization stone found In Vera Cruz, Mexico

Road builders in southern Mexico discovered a script-covered block of stone among the rubble in a gravel quarry in 1999. A research team has now announced that the marks on the slab represent the oldest writing yet discovered in the Americas ~900 BCE

3,000 BP script on stone found in Mexico.Unknown writing system oldest found in New World

The stone block inscribed with patterned images that was found in Cascajal, near Veracruz, Mexico, contains 62 distinct signs, some of them repeated. It conforms to all expectations of writing. A signary (list of signs or symbols) with 28 distinct elements, each a codified glyphic entity, a few in repeated, short, isolable sequences. A consistent reading order.

Cascajal Block:Olmec marks ~ 900 BCE

Oldest Meso-Americanwriting 62 glyphs still undeciph-ered

Epigraphic drawing of block and frequency of signs

Olmec imagery consistently displays vegetal icons, which sprout to the top, indicating that the script is horizontal.

Mayan limestone stele112 square glyphs (logograms and

syllabic markers that help with pronunciation) from Pusilha, Belize

British Museum, London

Text it bears has not been entirely deciphered (which is not unusual for Mayan text), but we know that it relates to the reign of the Ruler K’ak’ Uti’ Chan, and that it tells us of his lineage, his rise to power, and some of the historically significant events during his reign (including warfare).

Oldest writing in Western hemisphere

Diego de Landa Calderón Bishop of Yucatán

1524 – 1579Obtained valuable information on pre-Columbian Maya writing

as Inquisitor he also destroyed much of their culture and codices in his zeal to wipe out idolatry.His version of a Mayan �alphabet� (above right) was wrong, he had never encountered syllabic writing, but helped later decipherment.

Dresden Codex

pre-Columbian Maya book of 11-12th century CE of the Maya in Chichén Itzá, contains astronomical tables of outstanding accuracy.

See pp. 128-9 Robinson

Grolier Codex ~1021-1154 CE Pre-Columbian

Michael Coe Yale anthropologist

deciphered Mayan scripts

Found in cave, painted on fig-bark paper, Venus almanacDepicts death god with a victim, pages badly damaged by moisture, used hematite red, black & blue-green. Bar dot

Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson 1898- 1975English archeologist and Mayanistepigrapher, regarded as the pre-eminent mid-20th century scholar of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization.He deciphered Maya hieroglyphics related to the calendar

and astronomy, as well as identifying some new nouns. He developed a numerical cataloguing system for the glyphs (T-number system). His attempted decipherments were based on ideographic rather than linguistic principles. In his later years he resisted the notion that the glyphs have a strong phonetic component.

Deciphering Ancient Scripts

Script Year Person

Hieroglyphs 1823 Young

Champollion

Cuneiform 1838 Grotefend

Rawlinson

Linear B 1953 Ventris

Phaistos signs Undeciphered

Maya Glyphs 1952 Knorosov et al.

Yuri Knorosov

Breaking the Mayan code

Temple of InscriptionsPalenque, Mexico discovered 1952

Tomb of King Pacal and jade mosaic funerary mask found in crypt

See pp. 138-9 Robinson

David Stuart PhDProfessor of Art History University of Texas Austin, MacArthur awardee at age 18, epigrapher, Mayan scholar

Linda Schele

TatianaProskouriakoff

Main Mayan language & archeological sites

p. 122Robinson

Five possible spellings of Balam (jaguar)Ranging from top left glyph wholly logographic to bottom right glyph - a compound of three phoneticsigns - is wholly phonetic

Mayan writing is a phonetic one whose glyphs denote entire words and whose component signs convey syllabic sounds, usually c+v

Mayan writing uses four types of signsLogographsound and meaning of the whole word e.g. glyph balam for tiger

Rebusconveys sound of one word by using another word that shares that sound (rare)

Phonetic complement conveys the desired pronunciation

Semantic determinative denoted which of several potential meanings to read e.g. the day glyph for a date

Mayan Hieroglyphs:deciphering a lost language

In 1999 archeologists discovered a small altar-like platform in Palenque, Mexico that was covered in Mayan hieroglyphics. Researchers have now decoded much of the ancient writing which dates back to 100 BCE

MayanGlyphs

Translating Mayan glyphs

Palenque ruler

K�anJotChitam I

13 years

The God GI�Good One�

And two years later

Maya Chocolate Cupceramic vessel from Rio Azul, Guatemala

In CholanMaya uchi’i

means to drink

CacaoConfirmed

by chemical anayses of scrapings

See p.143Robinson

Meso-American Scripts 500 BCE to 1697 CE

Meso-American numbering systems

• Upper: Bar and dot system for numbers 1-19• Lower: Aztec signs for numbers 20, 400 and 8000

Mayan SyllabaryNot every glyphic position is universally agreed.~ 85% of glyphs can be read.

Mayan glyphs: Naj tunich cave

Early Maya Glyphs, Guatemala

A column of 10 glyphic words, uncovered in ruins in Guatemala, is unreadable even by the most expert scholars.

Clear evidence that the Maya were writing more than 2,300 years ago.The Zapotec, who lived around Oaxaca, Mexico, appear to have led the way to literacy, at least by 400 B.C.E.It is generally agreed that the primal writing by contemporary groups in Mesoamerica was one of just four scripts - Sumerian, Egyptian and Chinese are the others - to be invented independent of outside influences.

Maya Glyphs, Guatemala

The Maya glyphs were painted in black on white plaster. A scribe apparently drew the characters along a subtle pinkish-orange stripe as a guideline.Scholars were able to decipher just one symbol, the one meaning "ruler" or "lord" or possibly anyone of noble status. The exact meaning of the other nine glyphs will probably remain obscure until additional and longer texts are found from the same time in Mayan history.

discovered at San Bartolo, in northeastern Guatemala, radiocarbon dated 300 BCE.

Mayan glyph block