This paper summarizes several orthographic conventions pertaining to the usage of phonetic signs in Maya writing. These conventions have been recognized during the last twentyfive years and have been ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... A vertical column of 10 glyphic words, uncovered last year in ruins in Guatemala, is unreadable even by the most expert scholars, but they know what it means ...

Researchers excavating the ruins of an ancient pyramid in northeastern Guatemala have discovered examples of the earliest known Maya writing, produced between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C. The discovery shows ...

A previously unknown ancient mask from southern Mexico contains an inscription that shows the language used there prior to the Maya civilization remains undecipherable, according to a new study by ...

An excavation of Maya ruins in Guatemala, by University of New Hampshire archaeologist William Saturno, has revealed that a Mayan writing system was in use centuries earlier than previously thought.

NARRATOR: Imagine explorers arriving to find our cities deserted; our books have perished in some unknown catastrophe; all that is left to speak for us are the written words we have carved in stone.

At the height of the Mayan civilization, the only literate society in pre- Columbian America, kings fervently, perhaps desperately, believed in the power of the pen. Whether they thought it mightier ...