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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject: New Mayan Writing Discovered... |
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Some Maya peoples were writing earlier than previously thought...
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ANTIGUA, Guatemala (Reuters) -- Archaeologists excavating a pyramid complex in the Guatemalan jungle have uncovered the earliest example of Mayan writing ever found, 10 bold hieroglyphs painted on plaster and stone.
The 2,300-year-old glyphs were excavated last April in San Bartolo and suggest the ancient Maya developed an advanced writing system centuries earlier than previously believed, according to an article published Thursday in the journal Science.
The glyphs date from between 200 B.C. and 300 B.C., and come from the same site in the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala where archaeologist William Saturno found the oldest murals in the Mayan world in 2001. Radiocarbon tests indicate the writing is 100 years older than the murals depicting the Mayan creation myth.
The glyphs, thin black paintings on off-white stucco, lay in a plastic tub in a laboratory in an old house in the colonial city of Antigua on Thursday as archeologists cleaned and cataloged other stones from the San Bartolo site.
Although the writing is mostly indecipherable, Saturno and his team claim one glyph could be an early version of the word "ajaw," or "ruler."
"People have long been hoping to find a carved stone monument from this period of the Maya," said Mary Miller, a Mayan art expert at Yale University.
"It turned out not to be carved in stone but instead associated with this incredible complex of early paintings," she said. "It's as if we were to find pictures of Jesus on the cross from the time when he was really alive."
The pyramids at San Bartolo were constructed over several centuries, with newer structures built over the old. Guatemalan archaeologist Boris Beltran discovered the hieroglyphic writings by accident while excavating a structure buried deep below the room housing the ancient murals.
The archaeologists say some of the glyphs are pictorial, with one resembling a hand holding either a brush or a sharp instrument to draw blood.
"We can't read this stuff because it's so early," said David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, who co-wrote the paper in Science with Saturno and Beltran. "It's even more exotic looking than the known Mayan glyphs."
"It's like trying to read some of the writing in medieval manuscripts or handwriting from the 1500s. Even though it is our same writing system we don't recognize it," Stuart said.
It's as if we were to find pictures of Jesus on the cross from the time when he was really alive.
-- Mary Miller, Mayan art expert, Yale UniversityThe earliest writing in the region dates as far back as 600 B.C. and was found in Mexico's Oaxaca valley, said Saturno, though that date is still debated by scholars.
Stuart said the newly discovered script resembles text used by neighboring people during the Mayan late pre-classic and early classic periods, raising questions about the relationships between ancient Mesoamerican civilizations.
"I think the Maya participated in the invention of writing much earlier than thought," Stuart said. "As cities began in Mesoamerica around this time, writing was a part of that, just like public art and presentation of political ideology. It's all part of a package."
The Mayans dominated southeastern Mexico and much of Central America for thousands of years until the Spanish conquest 500 years ago. Their descendants still live in the region.
Saturno announced last month he had uncovered the most elaborate wall of a 2,000-year-old mural, likened to the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, at San Bartolo.
The complexity of the writing found at San Bartolo indicates that even earlier glyph examples could be uncovered in the future.
"The history of the origins of Mesoamerican writing are not resolved by this find," Saturno said. But the recent discoveries in Guatemala clearly show "that the full story has not yet been told." |
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/01/05/guatemala.discovery.reut/index.html |
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SuperFly
Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Location: In the doghouse
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:54 am Post subject: |
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| One of the truly great historical/literary tragedies was when the Spanish burned all the Maya/Aztec books. It would have been fascinating to read things from a culture at that level of development. And who knows, maybe igttg would have found a clue to the lost continent of Mu. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:13 am Post subject: |
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darn !
couldn't a reporter have taken a picture?
i really would like to see a photo of it! |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| i really would like to see a photo of it! |
The scholars who work on Maya writing are a tight little group, mostly based in Yale, Harvard, and Univ. Texas, Austin.
Check their webpages. One of their fathers is closely affiliated with National Geographic, so maybe they will publish pics.
See Michael Coe's very readable Breaking the Maya Code. Lot's of pics in there (but not a pic of this, of course). |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:02 am Post subject: |
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Interesting, Gopher. I tried top find a picture of the glyphs but nothing is published yet.
Did you know the mayans were the first to use "zero" in their number system?
This has a lot of other script/glyphs from other sites in Guatemala.
http://www.transformart.com/dhalbe/guatpics2/ruinas.htm |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| Did you know the mayans were the first to use "zero" in their number system? |
Nice link, Nautilus.
I knew about Mayan mathematics. I have also seen data on the Inca's successful experiments with brain surgery, and the Chinchorro fishermen in the Atacama who practiced complex mummification techiques several thousand years before the Egyptians adopted similar methods.
Check this out...
http://www.momiaschinchorro.com/
You should read Arriaza's book if you get a chance. Smithsonian Press.
Pre-Contact Latin American history is an extremely fascinating and underexplored field of study. |
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edoras
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| One of the truly great historical/literary tragedies was when the Spanish burned all the Maya/Aztec books. It would have been fascinating to read things from a culture at that level of development. And who knows, maybe igttg would have found a clue to the lost continent of Mu. |
There was something about the Mayans in one of the first episodes of the 500 Nations series with Kevin Costner. Quite amazing stuff. I have the 8 video set of this series if anyone is interested. I need to sell it before leaving Korea.
Where did you get your info about Mu? |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:57 am Post subject: |
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| edoras wrote: |
| There was something about the Mayans in one of the first episodes of the 500 Nations series with Kevin Costner. Quite amazing stuff. I have the 8 video set of this series if anyone is interested. I need to sell it before leaving Korea. |
I am, and I'm not even sure what it is. PM me, eh?
What do the Mayan's and Seinfeld have in common? Nothing.
BTW: the world's gonna end relatively soon... Mayan calendar supposedly only goes up to about 2012 or so.... Have not read on this subject in a while, so check for yourselves.  |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 7:39 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Where did you get your info about Mu? |
Ummmm...I was taking a cheap shot at igotthisguitar's wacky posts. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:28 am Post subject: |
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Gopher- some interesting pictures on there, -unfortunately my spanish isn't too hot:)
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| Pre-Contact Latin American history is an extremely fascinating and underexplored field of study. |
Would you say that much of the culture has survived quite well by word of mouth, or is it mostly a case of scientific deduction/ reconstruction? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| Would you say that much of the culture has survived quite well by word of mouth, or is it mostly a case of scientific deduction/ reconstruction? |
These are the top four people in the U.S. (in no particular order below) in whose works you will find the answer to your question, which, is a very good question and goes right to the heart of the problem in pre-Contact Latin American history...
http://www.yale.edu/span-port/faculty/adorno.html
http://www.wmich.edu/history/facultystaff/facultyprofiles/julien.html
http://www.ioa.ucla.edu/backdirt/sprsum05/olmec.html
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/05.22/03-urton.html
Also see these collections (found in any self-respecting U.S. university library)...
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/outreach/zsam1995.htm
This is still the best theoretical work on oral history, even though Vansina treats African oral history and not pre-Contact Latin America...
http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/0643.htm
The only answer I can give is that it is very problematic. Much direct evidence was destroyed in the Conquest and the later campaigns to extirpate idolatry, as Ya-ta Boy refers to above.
There are several other equally frustrating hurdles to overcome as well, the most important of which is the academe's refusal to consider this field anything but "archaeology" or "anthropology." I wonder, though, why the ancient Greeks, and I'm talking before Classical times, are worthy of historians' time and efforts, but the pre-Contact civilizations aren't. (The answer is far from simple, even if Eurocentrism and a very subtle form of persisting racism seem to be at play here.) |
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