From Calendars to Writing: The Mayans

What? I'm writing a post that includes the words calendars and Mayans? Must be talking about 2012. While that is a very interesting topic, and there is a great article relating the flaws in the prediction of the end of the world next year, this is not what I am here to talk about today. Sorry to crush your hopes of an exciting post as if I had hit them with a meteor.

A Mayan calendar

 The Mayans, as everyone knows, invented a calendar that ends at the end of next year. This people placed a huge importance on calendars. (Apparently a lot more than I do, since I my calendar is still on the month of September). They developed a 52-year Calendar Round that consisted of the Sacred Round and the Vague Year. Each day in this Calendar Round has a different number and name associated with it, which does not repeat until the next 52 year cycle.
Each culture seems to have its own reasons for developing a written language. Historians believe that the "urge to record important dates seems to have spurred the forebears of the Maya to take the intellectual and technological leap into writing (The Writing Revolution). Calendars were used to record important dates, of course, but some believe that, much like our group discussed in Sam's post earlier with the Egyptians, the Mayans may have used writing to convince the people of the "divine kingship in the emerging states." With writing, they could have easily set in stone the divine lineage of their kings and significant dates that supposedly occurred.

Before the written language, the Mayan people may have had primitive tallies, but these only record numbers, not what is being counted. Conversely, pictures record objects, but "show a given number of objects by drawing that number of objects." Neither of these forms are writing, but, combined, they connect numbers in objects similarly to language, so they can be read back in phrases.

The Mayan script consists of 550 logograms which represent phrases and 150 syllabograms, which represent syllables (link). Single signs could be read in more than one way. Scribes, who were members of the upper class, seemed to like to use many different spellings as well. However confusing this language may be to us, it was perhaps the most advanced written language at the time. With it, the people were able to write down anything that they cared to.

Brianne from group 1 put up a great post today on how the Mayans recorded their writings. You should definitely check it out! The Mayans basically made paper in a technique similar to the making of papyrus (Coincidence how two cultures, on two different sides of the world, used the same technique? Perhaps the Nephites and Lamanites, who knew reformed Egyptian, also knew how to make papyrus?) but with the inner bark of the fig tree.


Source: Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. "Maya Glyphs: Calendars of Kings." The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.