The Maya Glyphs
The Mayans were not a single group of people. Like Europe of the same era, the nations. that formed the Mayan World spoke several different languages. There were exchanges and interrelated cultures; however, there were also established national identities as well. The writing system developed by the Ch’olan language group and possibly the Tzeltalan may have originated with the Olmecs, it was later adopted by the Yucatec language speakers as well.
The glyphs are read in paired columns, like a modern day newspaper, so that the reader does not go straight across from left to right or right to left but reads one pair of glyphs then goes down a line. When the bottom is reached, a reader starts again at the top and reads down to the bottom, until the end of the section is reached. Writers might use logograms (symbols that express meanings) or syllabograms (symbols that express sounds) in any combination, to write in one or several different languages. Then again, they might just chose to use one or the other type of glyph, to write in a single language.
Mayan writing is securely dated back to 300 BCE at the site of San Bartolo. While this writing is clearly Mayan, many of the symbols are different and the text has not yet been deciphered. The story of deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphs starts with Bishop Diego de Lanada who was determined to destroy Mayan writings. In the process, he recorded a section of the Mayan “alphabet” giving subsequent insight into the meanings of these symbols. When John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood rediscovered the Mayan Civilization in the mid-nineteenth century they recorded accurate drawing of the glyphs. Sir Eric Thompson made a systematic catalog of all the Mayan hieroglyphs and divided them into sets. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov and Denjamin Wohorf attempted to read the glyphs using phonetic approach. Heinrigh Berlin attach the name “Emblem Glyphs” to one set of glyphs. Tatiana Proskourikoff attempted a logical approach that some of them recorded the lifetime of a ruler. The historical approach made it possible to begin work deciphering the glyphs and combining the symbolic and syllabic approaches provided the additional clues. Work on reading the Mayan Glyphs is still ongoing.
