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pauraque_bkAbout 100 people answered the pop quiz. Thanks!
Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in the 1830s, primarily by Jean-François Champollion. The purpose of this question was to gauge how aware the respondents were of what I'd consider to be a very well-known and strongly accepted decipherment. When I was in sixth grade, we were taught to write an approximation of our names with Champollion's single-phoneme characters. We even added properly-gendered name determinatives to the end. Aw.
At first I was surprised that anyone didn't know... I mean, "Rosetta Stone" is a common phrase, right? But some of the comments make it seem more likely that the few people who answered "no" know of the decipherment, they just disbelieve it. I probably should have phrased the questions more like "To the best of your knowledge, is it generally accepted that etc".
There is no decipherment of the Phaistos Disk that has been generally accepted. The purpose of this question was to gauge awareness of what I thought was a pretty well-known undeciphered text. However, it seems that a lot of people who aren't language buffs haven't heard of it, and some who have believe one or another of the proposed translations. Again, I should have asked whether there was a generally accepted solution. Nonetheless, 75% of you still gave the answer I was looking for. Can anyone think of an undeciphered writing system that's more widely known?
As you may have guessed, the subject I was really interested in was Mayan hieroglyphs. Yes, they have been deciphered, but as I suspected, many of you (42%) thought they hadn't, and based on the comments, some didn't know one way or the other.
Despite being a language buff, I wasn't sure myself to what extent the writing had been deciphered until I read Michael D. Coe's Breaking the Maya Code. I had a vague idea that perhaps only the calendar was fully understood, which was indeed the case for some time. But major breakthroughs began in the 60s and 70s, and now almost all the inscriptions can be read. Why doesn't everyone know about it, as is the case with Egyptian? Why didn't my sixth grade class write their names in Landa's syllabary?
It seems to me there are quite a few factors at work here. Most obviously, the Mayan decipherment is more recent. Plenty of people are old enough that when they were in school, the Mayan script was still a mystery. But I'm 22, and I wasn't taught about it in school either. Were any of you? (I went to California public schools, which are certainly a mess.)
Also, Mayan decipherment was not as dramatic as one brilliant man working from a bilingual text. Far more than with Egyptian, Mayan writing was deciphered through the work of many people over a long period. There's no one hero of Mayan hieroglyphs, no one Rosetta Stone moment.
And, as Coe explains in his book, there are reasons it didn't happen that way. Strong personalities within the Mayanist community, such as Eric Thompson, forcefully resisted the idea that phonetic readings of the glyphs was the way to go, denying that the writing recorded history, or even that it was a true writing system at all. In Coe's introduction, he's careful to note that there are no "villains" in his story, just human beings who were doing their best, but it's hard to deny that Thompson held back Mayan decipherment for decades. Ironically, a great deal of help was found in the work of Mayanists in communist Russia, beyond the reach of that stifling influence.
Coe doesn't go into this in very great detail, but it also seems to me that there's a racist element in both the initial resistance to viewing Maya inscriptions as real writing, and in the continuing lag in public education about the Mesoamerican cultures. There was civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas, but you'd hardly know it to read the textbooks I read in school. I've been an Egypt buff practically all my life, and I'm struck by the similarities -- the Mayans also built great cities and monuments (including pyramids), used beautiful and complex writing, had powerful kings and many gods, made bloody wars against their neighbors, and were arguably more advanced than the Egyptians in math and astronomy. Both the Mayan civilization and the Egyptian eventually declined, and both were conquered by Europeans. Yet, we venerate the Egyptians, while barely acknowledging the Mayans' existence by comparison.
Is it too hard to admit that Indians did all this? The Egyptians were not black -- they oppressed their black neighbors the Nubians (along with many other cultures, of course) -- if they had been black, would Egyptologists have been less eager to allow them their accomplishments?
There's a double-edged sword to it. On the one hand, there's a tendency to devalue Indian cultures as a way of reducing the guilt over what's been done to them. Then there's the "noble savage" myth that still exists as a way of emphasizing the guilt and, paradoxically, reclaiming innocence... and the Maya don't work with that either. Maya lands certainly weren't a peaceful utopia shattered by cruel European warfare, as some would prefer to imagine.
But, you know, I'm not an expert on this. I'm just a dude who reads a lot of books. What do you guys think? What's your experience of the way your culture views the Maya?
By the way, some of you mentioned 2012, said to be when the Maya believed the world would end. This is quite right. The current Great Cycle in the Maya calendar began on August 13, 3114 BC, and will end on December 23, 2012, at which time the world will be destroyed and recreated. Coe reproduces a Mayan prophecy about what precisely will happen on that day:
Then the sky is divided
Then the land is raised,
And then there begins
The Book of the 13 Gods.
Then occurs
The great flooding of the Earth
Then arises
The great Itzam Cab Ain.
The ending of the word,
The fold of the Katun:
That is a flood
Which will be the ending of
the word of the Katun.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in the 1830s, primarily by Jean-François Champollion. The purpose of this question was to gauge how aware the respondents were of what I'd consider to be a very well-known and strongly accepted decipherment. When I was in sixth grade, we were taught to write an approximation of our names with Champollion's single-phoneme characters. We even added properly-gendered name determinatives to the end. Aw.
At first I was surprised that anyone didn't know... I mean, "Rosetta Stone" is a common phrase, right? But some of the comments make it seem more likely that the few people who answered "no" know of the decipherment, they just disbelieve it. I probably should have phrased the questions more like "To the best of your knowledge, is it generally accepted that etc".
There is no decipherment of the Phaistos Disk that has been generally accepted. The purpose of this question was to gauge awareness of what I thought was a pretty well-known undeciphered text. However, it seems that a lot of people who aren't language buffs haven't heard of it, and some who have believe one or another of the proposed translations. Again, I should have asked whether there was a generally accepted solution. Nonetheless, 75% of you still gave the answer I was looking for. Can anyone think of an undeciphered writing system that's more widely known?
As you may have guessed, the subject I was really interested in was Mayan hieroglyphs. Yes, they have been deciphered, but as I suspected, many of you (42%) thought they hadn't, and based on the comments, some didn't know one way or the other.
Despite being a language buff, I wasn't sure myself to what extent the writing had been deciphered until I read Michael D. Coe's Breaking the Maya Code. I had a vague idea that perhaps only the calendar was fully understood, which was indeed the case for some time. But major breakthroughs began in the 60s and 70s, and now almost all the inscriptions can be read. Why doesn't everyone know about it, as is the case with Egyptian? Why didn't my sixth grade class write their names in Landa's syllabary?
It seems to me there are quite a few factors at work here. Most obviously, the Mayan decipherment is more recent. Plenty of people are old enough that when they were in school, the Mayan script was still a mystery. But I'm 22, and I wasn't taught about it in school either. Were any of you? (I went to California public schools, which are certainly a mess.)
Also, Mayan decipherment was not as dramatic as one brilliant man working from a bilingual text. Far more than with Egyptian, Mayan writing was deciphered through the work of many people over a long period. There's no one hero of Mayan hieroglyphs, no one Rosetta Stone moment.
And, as Coe explains in his book, there are reasons it didn't happen that way. Strong personalities within the Mayanist community, such as Eric Thompson, forcefully resisted the idea that phonetic readings of the glyphs was the way to go, denying that the writing recorded history, or even that it was a true writing system at all. In Coe's introduction, he's careful to note that there are no "villains" in his story, just human beings who were doing their best, but it's hard to deny that Thompson held back Mayan decipherment for decades. Ironically, a great deal of help was found in the work of Mayanists in communist Russia, beyond the reach of that stifling influence.
Coe doesn't go into this in very great detail, but it also seems to me that there's a racist element in both the initial resistance to viewing Maya inscriptions as real writing, and in the continuing lag in public education about the Mesoamerican cultures. There was civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas, but you'd hardly know it to read the textbooks I read in school. I've been an Egypt buff practically all my life, and I'm struck by the similarities -- the Mayans also built great cities and monuments (including pyramids), used beautiful and complex writing, had powerful kings and many gods, made bloody wars against their neighbors, and were arguably more advanced than the Egyptians in math and astronomy. Both the Mayan civilization and the Egyptian eventually declined, and both were conquered by Europeans. Yet, we venerate the Egyptians, while barely acknowledging the Mayans' existence by comparison.
Is it too hard to admit that Indians did all this? The Egyptians were not black -- they oppressed their black neighbors the Nubians (along with many other cultures, of course) -- if they had been black, would Egyptologists have been less eager to allow them their accomplishments?
There's a double-edged sword to it. On the one hand, there's a tendency to devalue Indian cultures as a way of reducing the guilt over what's been done to them. Then there's the "noble savage" myth that still exists as a way of emphasizing the guilt and, paradoxically, reclaiming innocence... and the Maya don't work with that either. Maya lands certainly weren't a peaceful utopia shattered by cruel European warfare, as some would prefer to imagine.
But, you know, I'm not an expert on this. I'm just a dude who reads a lot of books. What do you guys think? What's your experience of the way your culture views the Maya?
By the way, some of you mentioned 2012, said to be when the Maya believed the world would end. This is quite right. The current Great Cycle in the Maya calendar began on August 13, 3114 BC, and will end on December 23, 2012, at which time the world will be destroyed and recreated. Coe reproduces a Mayan prophecy about what precisely will happen on that day:
Then the sky is divided
Then the land is raised,
And then there begins
The Book of the 13 Gods.
Then occurs
The great flooding of the Earth
Then arises
The great Itzam Cab Ain.
The ending of the word,
The fold of the Katun:
That is a flood
Which will be the ending of
the word of the Katun.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 01:24 pm (UTC)I was kind of approximating with Egyptian hieroglyphs -- I know about the Rosetta Stone, of course, but my impression was that we have a better idea of how their writing works, but still can't translate everything by any means.
I'm a 23 year old native Californian, and I remember studying Cortez in fourth grade with absolutely no caveats whatsover, just Great Man praise, so education has certainly changed in this state in the last fifteen years or so. So it's not surprising that the only Mesoamerican culture I ever learned about was the Aztecs, in seventh grade, and most of what I recall involves snakes, eagles, gold, sacrifices, and a lot of Spanish slaughtering. Still, I think I was probably confusing the Mayan mystery of "where did they *go*?" with "what did they write about?"
I'd never even heard of the Phaistos Disc, so I can't take any credit for thinking it undeciphered. Dumb luck.
The writing style I would say it more widely-known to be undeciphered is the majority of cuneiform writing, but maybe I only think it's widely-known because I know it. *g*
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 01:46 pm (UTC)Still, I think I was probably confusing the Mayan mystery of "where did they *go*?" with "what did they write about?"
I don't think there's any mystery about where they went... there are still Maya Indians in Mexico, and they still speak a descendant of the Classical Maya language.
The writing style I would say it more widely-known to be undeciphered is the majority of cuneiform writing, but maybe I only think it's widely-known because I know it. *g*
Well, I don't know if the majority of cuneiform systems are deciphered or not, but there's a variety of them... Sumerian is probably the best known, that's logographic and primarily deciphered. Then there's Ugaritic, that one's a deciphered consonantal alphabet. Which ones were you thinking of?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 11:24 pm (UTC)Or in any case the Mayan mystery of why the cities were abandoned.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 01:38 pm (UTC)You are wonderful and I love you so much for noticing (it is shocking to me that I could love you more than I already did, but there it is.)
As you can imagine, this ignorance drives us historians of the region crazy. And yes I agree that there's a strong element of racism involved.
Um, let me know if you want any further reading on Maya decipherment or related topics. There are versions of the story other than Coe's, and there is a *lot* of interesting stuff on the long-term history of the supposedly-vanished-no-they-were-there-all-along Mayans. And talking people into reading books about the mesoAmerican past is pretty much what I live for.
You are so great!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 01:58 pm (UTC)To be honest, I'm terribly relieved to hear you say this -- I figured if I was way off-base in my assessment of the Maya situation, you'd be the one to tell me. :)
And yes, please do suggest any further reading you think would be good. I liked Coe's book (even though I sometimes found the personal stories grew tedious -- I wanted more about the script itself), but I know everyone has their biases. I was thinking about getting Coe's Reading the Maya Glyphs. Do you know if it's any good?
I hope you're not sorry you asked!
Date: 2004-11-22 03:41 pm (UTC)On some related problems of translation (but not decipherment) I love Dennis Tedlock's long introduction to his translation -- which I can vouch for as beautiful; can't make claims about its accuracy, either way -- of the Popul Vuh.
Nancy Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule is about the interactions between Spanish colonialists and Mayans in the Yucatan, on the theme of mutual cultural influence and cultural continuity. Brilliant and readable, though again probably somewhat out of date. Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests looks only at the earliest period of Spanish/Mayan interaction in the same place. I liked the first edition very much, and there's a new edition out now that must incorporate some of this new documentary evidence from the decipherments.
On Mayan history more recently, including a nice deconstruction of the term "Maya," Greg Grandin's Blood of Guatemala is a readable and fascinating history of people in and around the city of Quetzeltenango. The best historians (in English) of the 20th c. Yucatan are Ben Fallaw and Gilbert Joseph. For Chiapas, the best available English-language history is by Thomas Benjamin, but it isn't all that good. For Guatemala beyond Quetzeltenango and after 1954, read David McCreery.
Far less readable than any other book on this list, but kind of hilarious (and with some cool passages about the difficulties of learning to speak Maya), an account of present-day Yucatecan Maya life: Quetzil Castaneda (should be a tilda over the n there), In the Museum of Mayan Culture, which is an ethnography of the Mayan artisans who sell trinkets to tourists at Chichen Itza. This also gives the short version of the history of archeology and anthropology in the Yucatan, which is pretty ugly.
One more: Sophie Coe (late wife of Michael) wrote a great book about indigenous foods of the Americas.
Um ... that's probably enough for a while!
Re: I hope you're not sorry you asked!
Date: 2004-11-23 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:02 pm (UTC)Probably because the Mayan writing doesn't look like "real" writing to me. Pictographs, but not with sounds associated with words. But I know it's more than that, because I've *read* translations, I've seen TV programs where they go over the inscriptions word for word to explain them, and I've read about the process of learning to read Mayan.
But somehow some part of my brain doesn't think it's "real", I suppose. Some sort of buried racism I prefer not to acknowledge consciously?
Or maybe it was just a brain fart.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:39 pm (UTC)I think part of the problem -- and this has been an issue with public perception of Chinese and Egyptian, too -- is that we're very accustomed to our alphabetic, non-pictographic system. We aren't taught how logographic writing actually works. It's not all *that* mysterious, it's just not our way. We see pictures, and our automatic thought isn't that it's writing, but that it's art, and should have the same vague, subjective properties as our art.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:30 pm (UTC)I also vaguely recall an extremely cursory treatment of some ancient African kingdoms other than Egypt, in seventh grade. Mali? Songhay? All I remember are the names.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 10:48 pm (UTC)Then again, I can believe it. The devaluation of black people is deeply ingrained in our culture. Not to mention that when Africans were brought here, they were intentionally separated from others of the same culture so that they'd lose their language and identity, the result being that most present-day African-Americans have no clue where in Africa any of their ancestors came from, and lack a connection to any specific home culture. I think that puts a damper on interest in African history as well.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:48 pm (UTC)The person who discussed this was a guy named Giorgio Bon Giovani (I think I spelled it right), I don't know if you know him there; he's quite famous for having the same wounds Jesus had when crucified, I can't remember the name of those in English right now.
Anyway, this whole conference was about Metaphysics and according to him, the interpretation of the Mayan prophecy is exactly that; those who aren't 'pure' enough to re-build the Earth will have to 'die' in which ever catastrophes may occur, and those 'pure' will be taken somewhere temporarily until the Earth can be inhabited again.
Very interesting. Thanks very much for that additional info, mine was incomplete. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:53 pm (UTC)he's quite famous for having the same wounds Jesus had when crucified, I can't remember the name of those in English right now.
The word you're looking for is "stigmata".
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 03:10 pm (UTC)It seems to me that another reason for Egypt's dominance would be its importance in the Bible and to early Judaism. I know my education was sort of atypical in the sense that I got way more of that than most people, but I can see how people might see Egypt as more...applicable to their lives. I know I did a shit job of explaining that, but hopefully you get the gist?
I studied Ugaritic in college, briefly. *still has abecedary somewhere* Not that it directly applies to the conversation, but I felt like sharing. :>
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 04:22 pm (UTC)What I meant before is that Western culture has more of a direct tie to Egypt than Mexico, so maybe we feel more like it's our history. (Forgive use of "we," I just sort of mean blah blah blah dominant whatever.) When we came into contact with the Indians we viewed them as outsiders as opposed to ancestors. Then again, I am making all this up. Maybe Egypt just had a good publicist.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 10:26 pm (UTC)I'd like to say that it's just been so long that it's ridiculous for there to be lingering bad blood, but perhaps not.
Or perhaps there's a sense that since the Egyptians suffered the plagues, they paid for their crimes.
Maybe Egypt just had a good publicist.
Well, it certainly did, a number of them! Egypt became extremely popular in the early 20th century, fueled by a number of interesting discoveries, Tutankhamen's tomb among them. Egyptian curiosities were marketed for profit, including ground-up bits of mummies, which were supposedly medicinal.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 07:07 pm (UTC)I had no idea that Egypt had anything to do with religious stuff until a few years ago.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 03:25 pm (UTC)I do think that our relative ignorance of Mayan culture (and other primitive cultures, wherever they may be found) does have an element of racism behind it. I know very little about Mesoamerican cultures myself, but that's certainly the case with classical Indian culture. Much of classical Indian history has been wildly misinterpreted for a wide variety of reasons, but the biggest misinterpretation was due to racism. No one wanted to believe that the dark-skinned people indigenous to India could have developed a sophisticated civilization, and even after it was discovered that they *had*, there was still a great deal of resistance to the idea. It was very easy for people to say, "oh, that was brought in from outside the subcontinent," because there was a vague connection to Mesopotamia. Likewise, I think it'd be very easy for people to say, "oh, it's just art, it's not a real language," and dismiss Mayan achievements out of hand.
I possibly got a little off-topic there.
But, I think it's easier to accept Egyptian achievements not only because they weren't dark-skinned, but also because they were treated as relative equals to the Romans and the Greeks, *by* the Romans and the Greeks, and we know that they were The Shit. But while the Greeks did have contact with India, it was mostly of the "let's kick their asses" and/or "gee, their civilization sure is quaint" variety. And if you look at the accomplishments of most primitive civilizations with reference to what the Romans were doing at the time, it's yet again easy to dismiss those other cultures as not being worth anyone's while, because they couldn't even begin to compare to Roman culture. This is how early historians looked at the situation, and I think a lot of that has held over.
Also, I did know that the Phaistos Disk hasn't been deciphered, but I don't think that's as well known as, say, linear A. My grade eleven history class learned about linear A and linear B, but it wasn't until first year university that I even heard of the Phaistos Disk.
BTW, I friended you a while back.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 03:40 pm (UTC)Really? What did they talk about? The Incan quipu are very cool, but it's still debated whether they're actually a writing system, or just economic records.
I definitely agree that India has been short-changed, though we did learn a bit about it when I was in school. One fascinating thing a lot of people don't know is that our European languages are related to the Sanksrit-derived languages of India ('s why they call it the Indo-European group, don'tcha know). Discovering the similarites between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit was not only a major breakthrough in linguistic science, but should also highlight the fact that we're culturally and genetically related to India as well. We were one people as recently as five or six thousand years ago.
I thought of using Linear A, but for some reason thought no one would know about it. Hm.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 03:54 pm (UTC)Interesting stuff, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 04:55 pm (UTC)You know, I can't even remember. I think my teacher mostly talked about what it looked like and what it was used for, that is, economic records. But I have the shittest memory ever, so I couldn't tell you in great detail. I remember thinking it was very boring, though, because it was all about economics. Ironically, primitive economic systems are now a great pet interest of mine.
And yes, the discovery of the Indo-European language group has done a lot to increase interest in Indian civilization. I think it's more "acceptable" to admire it, now that we know that they were "like us". But it's also sort of worked to marginalize interest in and respect for non-Sanskrit-speaking peoples like the Dravidians, because they are not "like us" and are thus not as worthy of study. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of regions get treated like that, and it's predominantly those regions that are populated by dark-skinned or otherwise primitive peoples.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 06:25 pm (UTC)And yes, it should be perfectly obvious that the Maya were a highly sophisticated civilization. But my point was that many people will *wilfully ignore* what is in front of them if it conflicts with their set of values. I don't know if it's the case in Mesoamerica, so I'm not going to argue the point, but I do know that while it should be perfectly obvious that the Harappan civilization in India was a highly developed indigenous culture, there are still people who cling to the Aryan invasion theory. And that's because they don't want to accept the evidence that civilization could and did exist before the coming of the Indo-Europeans.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 04:31 pm (UTC)The history I got during middle school and high school was pretty unapologetically Louisiana History, American History, and Western Civ, and actually, I don't regret that. Our Western Civ program was really fabulous, and from what I've seen of nearby schools that did World History instead, they didn't go anywhere near as in-depth as we did. I do, on the other hand, regret the fact that my small college has so few non-western history courses; I always figured I'd be able to make up for my ignorance in the area once I got to college!
By the way, my conworld does have a major civilization that was always supposed to be heavily based on the Mayans, although I never got around to doing much with them.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 05:52 pm (UTC)Also, Egyptian artefacts were brought back to Europe by scientists who started a fashion.
I'm sure that's not the entire reason.
Certainly, France's best Mayan experts, Jacques Soustelle, always posited that Mayan inscriptions were actual writing.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 06:38 am (UTC)I don't have the background to evaluate this at all, and if I remember correctly there is a more limited tradition of human sacrifice involving prisoners, etc (the Mayan ball games?) but it may have been much more exceptional than the Aztec political tyrrany at the time of Cortes made it appear.
Would love to hear reactions from anyone who knows more.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 10:04 pm (UTC)I certainly don't remember the entire curricula of my working-on-twenty years of schooling (all in Michigan), but I took every history class my high school offered, plus the requisite World Studies and junior high World Geography, and did well in them all. I know we studied Mesoamerica a couple times in late elementary school; I can't remember particularly studying it at any time since, though I suspect it came up in at least one of the above-named classes. I don't remember studying Ancient Egypt in school. Ever. I expect we did, but it obviously didn't make much impact. Of course, despite the two "world" classes, some of us frequently said that our school didn't worry about the creation/evolution debate, because the world was just Europe and North America, and it simply didn't exist before 1450 AD, right?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 11:34 pm (UTC)I agree with
no one Rosetta Stone moment. And maybe that's why I've never really heard about it in day-to-day life. The general population doesn't have a lot of room for the boring aspects of history.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 03:38 pm (UTC)