What do we know about Maya writing?
The Maya dominated Central America for hundreds of years, famous for the cities they built in dense jungles, as well as their art, mathematics and calendar systems, but it is Maya writing which may have been their greatest achievement.
The Maya scribes used hundreds of different symbols in combinations to create a nuanced language which has been preserved in stone, pottery and even a handful of rare books.
What we know about the Maya writing system
Maya civilisation thrived in parts of Central America, including parts or all of modern day Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and southern Mexico, dominating the region from around 750BC until the arrival of the Spanish in the 17th Century AD
The Maya had the most sophisticated writing system in the Americas, thanks to its sophistication and ability to express complex ideas and facts.
A lot of original Maya writing has been preserved in painted pottery, and in carvings on bone, stone, wood and buildings across Central America, including at Guatemalan sites like Tikal and El Mirador.
Despite this, experts struggled to decipher Maya writing until a series of breakthroughs beginning in the 1930s, and occasional discoveries of new sources are still shedding new light on how the language developed.
How Maya writing worked
Maya writing was built around two different types of signs: logograms and syllabograms. Logograms are pictures of things which make up a whole word, whereas syllabograms combine symbols which represent sounds.
These signs were combined to create words, which were arranged in blocks or lines depending on the length of the ideas being expressed or the medium being used. A 20-based system used dots and bars to depict numerals, enabling scribes to add greater detail, and the Maya are the first known civilisation to have a symbol for zero.
Maya writing invariably refers to the affairs and interests of the ruling classes, including warfare, royal events and religious ceremonies.
Famous examples of Maya writing
Archaeologists have found hundreds of pieces of preserved Maya writing all over Central America, including important sites in Belize and Guatemala.
Modern researchers also have four books, known as the Maya codices, which are the only known surviving books written using the unique Maya system before the Spanish invasion in the 16th Century.
Of these four books, the Madrid Codex is the longest at 112 pages, but the 74-page Dresden Codex is more elaborate. The Paris Codex is a 22-page book of prophecies, while the Saenz Codex is the shortest at just 10 pages and is also the most recently authenticated.
New discoveries shed light on Maya writing
The most recent discovery of a new source of Maya script is Stela 87, a carved stone found at the Tak’alik Ab’aj archaeological dig near Retalhuleu, in south-western Guatemala in 2018.
Researchers believe Stela 87 is around 2,000 years old and it reveals some of the earliest forms of the Maya writing system.
The glyphs and techniques used on Stela 87 appear to reinforce the theory that the Maya script evolved from the earlier Olmec culture, as Tak’alik Ab’aj was the site of an Olmec city between 1,500BC and 100 AD.
The Stela 87 discovery comes not long after archaeologists discovered a column of glyphs on a wall at San Bartolo in 2005, providing evidence that Maya writing existed by around 400BC, hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.
These new discoveries only add to the reputation of the Maya as a sophisticated civilisation able to record events and tell stories with a nuance far beyond the capability of any other culture in the Americas at the time.
