The Decipherment of Maya Script 

Thank you for clarifying that. That makes much more sense and you explained it perfectly!

Well, if you read...all it’s about decoding, discovering , conquering....all names Europeans. It seems scholars have an inferiority complex. The Mayan people can read Mayan, Aztecs...Chibchas, etc...they still do. Wanna take credit and steal history it’s a joke.

It’s amazing how much linguists have learned in such a short time. And all it took was one very smart kid to figure it out. Thanks for the info.

You Are A Cunning Linguist.

That escalated quickly

He earned it.

The real hero 🙌🏽

Knorozov has been erected a statue in Mérida, Yucatan in 2018. It depicts him and Asya the cat! About the cat - Knorozov was a big cat lover and always had cats. He would credit his cats in his works and would be gravely upset if editors removed them.

​@@user-qd8yy9lc4gthat's adorable oh my god

Palenque comes from palenc which is a Catalan word, it comes from Spain. The original name of palenque is Otulum

Isn't tiangge originally nahautl? My family uses that as well as palenque often.

@@sebastianmarquez3014 Tianguis is nahuatl

@@Chactemal there a Mayan city called palenque

Thats fascinating. I've always been amazed at seeing Filipino names that would 100% fit living in Latin America.

a statue needs to be made of him - with The Cat, too.

yeah, probably

@@STScott-qo4pw already ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Yuri_Knorosov_monument_in_Mérida,_Yucatán.jpg

Thanks for your comment. You've made a good point. I went online to download that image of Knorozov. A very Stalinesque smile, I must admit.

@@mrbrightsideisdrunk that's amazing, haha

From what I understand, and I could be wrong, he died just after decipherment was finally achieved.

@@AncientAmericas This is true, he went to the grave still believing his interpretation was correct.

Ego delays scientific progress

@@pimpompoom93726 or he went to the grave because he finally realized his interpretation was incorrect.

Science advances, one funeral at a time.

Anyone who drapes the force of authority in the clothing of "the science" is toxic, and a millstone round humanity's collective neck. There is no one final authority in science other than TRUTH. We who pursue science must always seek always the truth, for nothing else can help explain the world (and how the world really works) to us.

A hypothesis is that Thompson knew, but he didn't want the world to know for many reasons.

like fauci

Thank you! I'm glad you found this as enlightening as I did!

You described it very well. Thank you!

Of all the 'cradles of Civilization', Meso-America is the youngest but in many ways we know more about the ancient Chinese or Egyptians than the Mayans from 700 yrs ago.

@@dutchreagan3676 probably helps that chinese and eqyptian cultures weren't harshly suppressed for centuries.

The books were about summoning demons through blood sacrifice. He saved millions of lives by destroying the evil books.

The same deliberate attempt happened in Egypt. The Romans closed all the "pagan" temples. Christians and muslims chiseled out lots of stone writing and pictures, and tried to wipe out the native ancient Egyptian language. It only survived in Coptic churches, just as Latin is only spoken in Christian churches today. Later on, European visitors burned papyri documents as fuel for fires or wrote over top of them, and the local Arabs used it as toilet paper.

Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov

The present is nothing but ripples on a pond caused by the small pebbles of history. Either by chance or by intent, the end result is the same

I really do not understand the comment you made. Seems you might be saying that the Russians overall might be rather dumb or uneducated. The Russian Library is one of the largest and complete in the world. They also are extremely smart overall and have and did have schools of the utmost kind. Perhaps take a peek at their museums. That will perhaps give you a new perspective. Sincerely, Sentebey

@@dougholliday467 my comment does not say that at all it’s insane that we only know about the language because a guy looted books during one of the last battles of the Second World War has nothing to do with him being Russian.

I love his cat!!

@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 same

@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 i m

9 l

@@alexandrusimo899a ll m.

later in life he actually realized that he held back all the development of mayan language studies. but ye what a selfish man, and he was knighted ffs

@@sweetbunnybungood thing knighting doesn’t mean anything

They are very good at what they do!

As bad as it is, it's much better than the progress we've made on almost all the other mesoamerican scripts. There's still no progress on Zapotec, isthmian, teotihuacan and mixtec writing.

Not by ‚the Spanish‘ but by a fanatic catholic.

@@AncientAmericas Sir, didn't Olmec civilization also have a script?

@@pimpompoom93726 Indeed they did. Check out my Olmec episode!

@@HarryGuit whats the difference? All those "colonists" were evil

That must have been an epic journey. Respect

Nobody cares about the Aztecs. Everyone’s obsessed with Mayans, as they predate the Aztecs and left more of a mark

Thank you! Did not know about Knorosov's other work. I personally don't think those scripts will ever be deciphered without some major additions to the available corpus.

For real? That's amazing!

Now I'm thinking Knorozov just had a sense of humor.

That's wild

Yes! When I was 12 years old I went to Chitzen Itsa. The archaeologists themselves - are the tour guides. My tour group was made to sit on the grass near the cenote. Imagine my shock - instead of deep, cutting-edge research and knowledge - they explained nonsense like: "This is not a city. Nobody lived here. They built monuments for ceremony. Gathered for ceremony. Then left." I told the archeologist - "look harder. You'll find the residential districts. But you haven't yet - because you haven't looked!" I smiled, thinking I'd be patted on the head as a bright, young student. Instead there was a vicious frown, and I was scolded like a fool. I tried saying - there's no possible way that this level of monumental building can be achieved without a city. Thousands of people residing here. These buildings are the result of not only regular taxation, but spoils of war, and years of prosperity. A highly stratified and organized government. There were institutions teaching engineering, and astronomy. (I pointed at the astronomical observatory building.) For God's sake they even had giant stadium for soccer matches here - playing Rubber Ball. This city was large! Temples, grand, huge, impressive - are like having a cathedral: like Notre Dame, and huge soccer stadiums for the world cup. This was not only a city: it was extremely cosmopolitan. I'm sorry; there's just no way in hell that a bunch of people went to the jungle every so often - and stacked up stones with this result. About as dumb as saying Paris was built like that... When he start arguing (cruelly) back with me, I grew frustrated. I don't know if I said it out loud...how can people so smart - be so stupid? When they say sites like gobekli tepe were not cities - and hunter-gatherers built it - I just have to laugh. If you go into archaeology, yet, underestimated the intelligence of ancient people - you shouldn't be in the field. We mustn't forget; the vast majority of dumb theories about ancient people - originate in prejudice. For some reason it is really damn difficult for old-gen white guys to imagine Native Americans living a very modern lifestyle in cities. The Mayans did not run around half-naked with painted bodies and feathers in their hair - hunting parrots in the woods. They did not "occasionally come together to form temp cities" they lived in them. Ironically Mel Gibson's Apocalypto shows their lifestyle more accurately. An extremely wealthy elite presiding over masses of peasants and slaves. Shopping in the market, and importing exotic, trendy goods from hundreds of miles away. Buying their children the latest talking bird pet craze - they have to be the first on the block to get it. I asked the question, how can highly educated academics believe nonsense? But I already know the answer. Idealizing the giants in the field - instead of questioning them.

If you hate them just for what you've heard, just imagine how we yucatecos with mayan ancestry feel about that lol

Not just the Spanish, but this is generally true of all the European colonialists.

AMEN! someone other than me is saying it too...

THANK GOD the Spanish conquered the Maya and ended their practice of human sacrifice. The Maya routinely sacrifices hundreds, and on some days, thousands of men, women and children to their gods. They did this by decapitation, but at other times by cutting the victim's heart out while the person was still alive. The removal of an actively beating heart was considered a great offering to their gods. The Spanish converted the Maya to peaceful Catholics, and it was a GREAT thing this happened.

@@ruthc8407 thank god Mexico gained its independence and shoved the greedy racist bastards back to their country and stopped giving them wealth that they squandered. And Not like burning innocent people as witches isn’t fun and full of meaning in ye olde country, right? Or inbreeding. That’s a cool Spanish thing to do too! Ooh! And hypocrisy like in this instance! 😬

I wish I had a better answer to explain such a tragedy but it's worth pointing out that that was a very different time. People didn't discern between the spiritual and secular like we do today. Back then, those were the same thing and spiritual concerns informed action for better or worse. De Landa probably thought he was doing the best thing possible for the Maya and their welfare, even if we find it completely abhorrent and tragic today. Our values and morals have been enormously influenced by the enlightenment which allows a division between spiritual and secular matters. The Spanish had no such benefit.

@@AncientAmericas yea but at no point while burning children at the steak and seeing the mass r*pe if women none of them thought... aye we kinda mean

It could be argued that well-meaning missionaries seeking to "educate" indigenous folk thought they were doing "God's will" by destroying knowledge of their ancient ways, and that the Church is more at fault than Spain was. We know, however, that one hand washed the other in this - the Church and the State both sought advantage in the New World, each for their own reasons, and used each other to accomplish mutually sought outcomes. This relationship existed in almost all Old World cultures which colonized the New World. That's the 30,000 ft. overview, anyway.

braindead religion caused this... they were so narrowminded that what they did had to be the only way to do things... instead of learning and admiring that things can be done in more than one way...

Welcome aboard!

Anytime!

Thank you!

@@AncientAmericas My pleasure! I just found your channel recently, and have subscribed. I'm very excited to watch more of your videos and learn new things about topics that have always spoke to me.

Thank you!

Wen I was a freshman in college in 1986 I was lucky to have Dr. Bill Fash as my archaeology professor. He specialized in the Maya at Copan, and worked with David Stuart. He was in awe of Stuart, who was very young then and was featured in many slides he'd present of his work in Copan. Even then much of the Maya glyphs had been deciphered by Stuart. And I haven't thought about that class (I was a business student who was just interested in archaeology and anthropology) in many years, but the second David Stuart was mentioned in this video a whole bunch of memories came flooding back, funny how that works! Dr. Fash had a replica of an incredibly detailed, incredibly thin, incredibly elaborate ceremonial knife he had found on one of his digs that he would pass around the class... the skill it took to make that without breaking it is unreal.

You're not alone.

@@AncientAmericas god just imagine what would have looked like.

@@AncientAmericas as far i can tell is there was no sociopolitical reason for a simplified script to be developed during thr pre colonial era. The Mayan hieroglyphics script was used to communicate from one Nobility to another, to flex their political influence and such.

I bet in those times writing was an exclusive thing that very few knew and the everyday person didn't need anyway. It's like talking today about differential equations: well few people know how to read them, manage them and actually have the need to do so , you need a few years of training to get to do that, and the everyday person actually doesn't have a use for it. So there's no need to develop an everyday simplified notation for differential equations apart from what there is in place.

@@magtovi it's not that simple as some nebulous "need" and it's wrong to think people from deep antiquity were widely illiterate. Just consider the middle and early late bronze age civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean, literacy was actually quite high. So something else must be in play we are not sure what exactly is at play , well maybe not we there's probably some experts that know why.

Number One...

I have that on the topic list and I've actually been keeping a close eye on the recent work. It's very exciting!

Long enough to taste comeuppance.

Thank you!

Yuri was a WWII survivor. I believe the many horrors he had seen and experienced in it (as well the horrors of living in Stalin's Russia) had left a tragic mark on his face and in his eyes. Which sadly, many perceive as a mean face... But Yuri was a gentle soul.

Thank you!

Thanks so much! I'm glad you're enjoying them!

Yes, that is a great observation. A biscript is not strictly necessary but it can make or break decipherment.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Very similar ro Evans' attitude regarding the Linear scripts.

Lol, reminds me of what an old professor of mine told me: basically, science progresses by old scientists dying. Funny enough, that professor was also a priest.

@@danadnauseam Right.Evans hoarded the scripts. The decipherent of Linear B was only made when more tablets were found at Pylos and published.

He was a WWII survivor. I believe the many horrors he had seen and experienced in it (as well the horrors of living in Stalin's Russia) had left a tragic mark on his face and in his eyes. Which sadly, many perceive as a mean face... But Yuri was a gentle soul.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you! More content is coming! You're welcome from Indiana!

Thank you!

You're welcome! It's a very good lecture.

You're welcome!

I mean, you could say the same about Maya. "Classical Maya" (the writing system) more or less seems to model its phonetics after a specific Mayan language, but the Mayan languages are as diverse as the European Romance languages. Writing in the Maya script was a lot like speaking French while using Latin spelling and grammar in your writing. It's a lot easier with a logosyllabic script due to not needing to match exact phonemes, but still.

A very good way to put it.

Thank you!

It's pretty amazing.

You're welcome. If I had the time, I would love to study mayan. Every once in a while, I pull out my book on Maya writing and just read from it just out of sheer wonder and always put it down wishing I could just devote a few months to it. I hope you have the chance to cultivate that passion!

@@AncientAmericas What about all the statues of the ( Hamites) who built the pyramids long before the Mayan Indians were around

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you! I'm glad that you enjoy them.

Thank you! We'll have more coming in 2023.

Thank you!

Thank you!

At least the carrots would be healthy, if incomplete. It's more like eating nothing but snack chips, cheese whiz, and diet soda. But I suspect junk-food TV like those reality shows are doomed, with everything going to subscription streaming services for the foreseeable future. The nerds and geeks may get fed up with social media gossip too, and get back to truly nerdy, geeky cool stuff. Hope so.

Compare number of views this has with number of views for Megan Thee Stallion latest vid ? Tells you all you need to know . There is very little hope for Humanity .

You're very welcome!

Thank you!

He actually passed away just after that. I'm not sure if he ever changed his mind but by then he was very old and ill.

Thank you!

Thank you!

💚👍

Don't worry. I do want to devote a lecture to how Maya glyphs work in the future.

@@AncientAmericas Cool!

Thank you!

@@AncientAmericas THANK YOU! A TRULY GREAT VIDEO.

Thank you. Yes, people have since pointed that out in the comments and I stand corrected!

Thank you! Give Coe's book a read. It's real good!

Thanks! Ancient American history is not the most popular history out there but I'm confident the views will come in time.

@@AncientAmericas The work produced here for free is a treat.. thank you for your contributions.. you will have to catch on! I think many people are growing tired of the Mayan sensationalism of Ancient Aliens.. some of us just want the down to earth.. and here it is!

Actually, many Maya today have learned how to write in their native script. There's a revival that's been going on for a few decades now. If you go on RU-vid and search, you can find videos of Maya teaching and learning how to write it.

Hebrew was "revived" as a day-to-day language from its continual liturgical and Scholastic use (not to mention Yiddish). Much easier case, surely.

@@AncientAmericas Nativism at its best

The problem is that maya languages are not the same, and not all use the same sounds (consonants, vowels). I thought "since some sounds have multiple glyphs, why not loan some glyphs to sounds without a glyph?", but there are a looot of sounds

In this video of the British Museum we talk about the modern use of the Mayan hieroglyphic writing in modern days. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WY6Lu22OR_0.html

You're welcome!

Thanks! Honestly, I'm a terrible self-marketer and self-promoter and not particularly social media savvy. I wouldn't know where to start. For reference, I've never used Instagram or twitter. But I get plenty of satisfaction making these videos. If they take off someday, excellent, if not, oh well.

​@@AncientAmericas I'm not terribly savvy either, but would probably start by posting to a few subreddits, here is a handy list: www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/subreddits Reddit should work well for now because you don't need an already-established following as with twitter and Instagram. Those platforms are better suited for managing and expanding an already established following. Let me know if you end up doing this for this or your next video so I can go and upvote it :D

@@world_moloch just need to get myself a reddit account first... but seriously, thanks for the suggestion!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

I think there's a NOVA or other PBS video about the decipherment with Dr. Schele and David Stuart and perhaps others. I might be confusing it with something else, but I think it was on the Maya glyphs. I don't recall the title, date, or season/episode numbers. I'd need to look it up. Now I want to rewatch, though. I remember being blown away by it, including that a high school teen had done so much before he got in college.

I believe I know what you're talking about. I want to say that it was NOVA that made a documentary about this back in the 00's. I remember because I watched it in a college class. It blew me away and really fueled my interest in the Maya. Before then I just knew the Maya as peaceful pyramid builders in the jungle and it opened my eyes to how much more there was.

Thank you! There's a lot of lore around knorosov and it looks like I missed some of the details. I appreciate you calling it out.

Good question. The name Palenque actually comes from the name of the nearby village of the same name. Many sites get named for the closest settlement or landmark. As for why we don't call it that today, I don't have a good answer. I suspect that the academics are hesitant to break with convention.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Why did they die so young?

@@chrissibersky4617 -- Stephens died of malaria. Catherwood died when the ship of which he was a passenger collided with another ship at sea and sank.

@@kevinbyrne4538 Oh my Lord! Thanks. 👍

Amazing book about their adventures - Jungle of Stone

Thank you!

Thank you! I believe that quote is from Michael coe's book breaking the Maya code

LIDAR has revolutionized Maya studies. It's incredible technology!

Who doesn't love a good pun?

I even like bad puns@@AncientAmericas

He certainly does!

I love catching his lectures online when I can. He's a brilliant guy!

In due time

Giving the track record of Hollywood movies about real history, I'd rather prefer a "boring" documentary.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

A very good observation, but remember that De Landa did not have a great gasp of writing systems. I think it's fair to assume that he (like most Europeans) was only familiar with European scripts which are always written with alphabets. A modern ethnographer or epigrapher would pick up on that easily because they've been exposed to other types of scripts. We are fortunate to have much more knowledge at our disposal than De Landa ever did. He was there to convert the Maya first and foremost, not to produce a modern enthographic account.

Also one more thing I should mention. The poor scribe that De Landa coerced into making his "alphabet" was not on board with this and did so reluctantly. We can deduce this because there's actually a part of De Landa's account where he ordered the scribe to write him a random sentence. De Landa couldn't read what the scribe wrote but we can read it today and what he wrote was "I don't want to." With that attitude in mind, I doubt he cared very much if De Landa understood the nuance of Maya writing. He probably just wanted to get out of there fast.