Ancient Maya
The lost civilization
By Georgia
Many features distinguish the Maya from other ancient societies of Mesomerica, but one that has attracted lots of admiration and attention is the Mayan hieroglyphic writing. The symbol like and calligraphy styled complexion of Mayan hieroglyphs are like no other writing system.
Mayans wrote with brushes made from animal hair and quills. Many Codex* style writing was done in black ink and red highlights which gives evidence of why the Aztec named the Maya territorry Land of red and black.
The Mayans wrote about legends, specific dates, discoveries, battles, astronomy, beliefs, gods, rulers and facts. They wrote about these things in books, on temple walls and on paper-bark trees.
The Mayans would carve and indent large stones and monuments with hieroglyphs. They also used animal skin and forms of bark to act as paper.
The Mayan script was in use untill the arrival of the Europeans. Although Mayan cities were abandoned, skill and knowledge of the writing and the scripts persisted among certain groups of the population. Unfortunately, the conquerors of the Mayas, the Spanish, showed little interest in the script and after a few generations, knowledge of the language was forgotten and lost.
Maya writing used pictographs and phonetic symbols. The first signs to be understood were mathematical, and usually appear in the form of dates, The Maya used what is known as the Long Count System, in which each date was recorded as the number of days since an earlier, fixed date.
The Mayans wrote numbers using three symbols. Dots, Dashes and a shell like symbol.
The Maya writing system or hieroglyphs includes a combination of symbols and logograms. The Mayan script has more than one thousand different glyphs. However, some glyphs relate to or mean the same as another.
* A codex is a book in the format of seperate pages normally bound together and given a cover. The codex replaced the scroll as a means of documenting achievements in the Mayan civilization.
Mayan Language
There are many Mayan spoken languages that have been identified, but there are four main categorised groups. Each Mayan spoken language is different and some important languages include Quich`e and Cakchiquel.