A codex: A Maya “book” of folded, painted bark. Only 4 survive.

MAYA WRITING

The Maya hieroglypic writing is arguably one of the most visually striking writing systems of the world. It is also very complex, with hundreds of unique signs or glyphs in the form of humans, animals, supernatural creatures, objects, and abstract designs. These signs are either logograms (to express meaning) or syllabograms (to denote sounds), and are used to write words, phrases, and sentences. In fact, the Maya can write anything that they can say.

The "Maya" in general were actually not a single people but many nations with different, but related, cultures, religions, and languages. Of the many Maya languages, only two (possibly three) were written down with the hieroglyphic system.

The order to read Maya glyphs is also not as straightforward as it would seem. Since glyph blocks are arranged in a grid, one would think that the reading order is either in rows or columns. In reality, Maya glyphs are read in "paired columns", meaning that the first glyph block is on the top left, the second is immediately to the right of the first, the third is under the first, the fourth under the second, and so forth. This yields a zigzagging reading order.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/maya.html

From “Talking Knots,” in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Recently some researchers have come to believe that the Inca did have a written language—indeed, that Inca texts are displayed in museums around the world, but that they have generally not been recognized as such. Here I am referring to the bunches of knotted strings known as khipu (or quipu as the term is often spelled).

All known writing systems employ instruments to paint or inscribe on flat surfaces. Khipu, by contrast, are three-dimensional arrays of knots. Although Spanish chronicles repeatedly describe khipkamayuq consulting their khipu, most researchers could not imagine that such strange-looking devices could actually be written records.

… “The Inca had no writing,” Brian Fagan, an archaeologist at University of California wrote. .. “The khipu was purely a way of storing precise information, a pre-Columbian computer memory.”

[However, researchers are] coming to doubt this conclusion. “Most serious scholars of khipu today believe that they were more than mnemonic (memory) devices, and probably much more.”

If Urton [a researcher of khipu] is right, khipu were unique. They were the world’s sole three-dimensional written documents and the only ones to use “a system of coding information” that “like the coding systems used in present-day computer language, was structured….as a binary code.”


A khipu usually consisted of colored spun and piled thread or string from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords. Khipus might have just a few or up to 2,000 cords.

THE MAYAN CALENDAR

In ancient times, the Mayans had a tradition of a 360-day year. But by the 4th century B.C.E. they took a different approach than either Europeans or Asians. They maintained three different calendars at the same time.

The Haab was the civil calendar of the Mayas. It consisted of 18 "months" of 20 days each, followed by 5 extra days, known as Uayeb, which were considered to be unlucky. This gives a year length of 365 days. The days of the month were numbered from 0 to 19. This use of a 0th day of the month in a civil calendar is unique to the Maya system; it is believed that the Mayas discovered the number zero, and the uses to which it could be put, centuries before it was discovered in Europe or Asia.

The Maya also had a ritual or religious calendar, unlike any other on Earth, made up of two “week” cycles of 13 and 20 days. This 260-day cycle, perhaps linked to the orbit of Venus, also had good-luck or bad-luck associations connected with each day.

Below are the names for the days of the “week” in the 20-day cycle:

The Maya also had a “Long Count,” used to locate days along cycle approximately 5,000 years long. Archaeologists estimate first day of the “Long Count” to be in August of 3114 BCE. The Maya may have believed this is the day the world began.

http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html

a Maya calendar stone

The Maya calendar was adopted by the other Mesoamerican nations, such as the Aztecs and the Toltec, which adopted the mechanics of the calendar unaltered but changed the names of the days of the week and the months.

An Aztec calendar, drawn from an Aztec calendar stone

Maya “books” consisted of painted bark folded accordion style into sheaves known as “codexes.” Onfly four survive; many were destroyed by the Spanish. The one above shows the 260-day ritual calendar.