From The Head Of Zeus Jones

Watched a brilliant program last night via Netflix "Watch Instantly" on the history of the deciphering of the Mayan hieroglyphs (it's actually available to watch online at PBS).

Apparently, the researchers were stumped for ages because at around 800 different characters, the Mayan language didn't fit the 20 - 35 needed for an alphabet; the 80 - 100 needed for a syllabic language nor did it have enough to fit a logographic language like Chinese which has thousands of different symbols.

The breakthrough was finally made by a teenager who realised that the Mayans did indeed have syllables-based writing but that there were often up to 15 different symbols for the same sound. The choice of which symbol to use appeared to depend not upon linguistic considerations but instead upon graphic considerations. Basically, they would substitute different symbols based upon the look of the symbols as well as the meaning of the symbols. Their writing had both literal as well as artistic meaning.

I thought this was fantastic on so many different levels. The richness of communication that this system must have been capable of is amazing to imagine. Additionally, because the symbols were pictures that different people "wrote/carved" differently the character of the writer/carver would have come though unmistakably. All in all, these would have been writings that would have required a reader to absorb and study in order to gain their full meaning. Writings that might have revealed layers and layers of new meaning the closer one looked.

Sigh...