Maya Hieroglyphs Decoded

In the 1980s, a small group of epigraphers realized they were looking at Maya hieroglyphs the wrong way. The script was not a loose collection of picture-symbols, as had long been assumed. Underneath the ornate, playful variations that scribes introduced into every carved or painted sign was a phonetic system—a way of writing syllables and words that could be read aloud. Once that principle clicked, the decipherment of Maya writing accelerated at lightning speed. “It was almost every day,” recalls Dr. David Stuart, a professor at the University of Texas who was in the middle of it. “There was a new word, a new phrase… we were sending letters to each other… a five or six year window in the late eighties, early nineties, when it was just happening at lightning speed.” That breakthrough has transformed Maya archaeology from a field that could only read dates into one that can reconstruct dynastic politics, religious ritual, and even the name of a specific Maya mathematician.

How the Script Actually Works