#Maya glyphs readers code#

Like the Japanese kana (which are syllabic signs) and kanji (which are based on Chinese characters), Mayan glyphs combine a fairly small set of phonetic signs that represent syllables with thousands of logographic signs representing words and concepts. It is probably the most complicated writing system ever invented, exceeding in complexity even the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script and today’s Japanese script. The unique and fascinating Mayan hieroglyphic script was created some two millennia ago and used until the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th century. Since then, the decipherment has yielded much new knowledge and has led to the publication of a number of important studies, such as C hronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2000) by Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube.Īndrea Stone and Marc Zender’s Reading Maya Art is yet another significant step forward in consolidating the picture of Mayan culture as one of the great civilisations of the ancient world, despite the essentially Stone Age level of technological development of the Maya people.

This told the dramatic contemporary story of how the Maya glyphs of Central America were successfully deciphered during the 1970s and 1980s – mainly by North American scholars following a pioneering suggestion in the early 1950s by the Russian scholar Yuri Knorosov, who first demonstrated the existence of phonetic representation in the glyphs.

#Maya glyphs readers code#

Two decades have passed since the American archaeologist and anthropologist Michael Coe published Breaking the Maya Code (1992).