Cracking the Myan Code

Watching the NOVA special Cracking the Maya Code made me realize a lot of things about the Maya’s and about their language that I had never before known. I thought it was very interesting how they figured out the Dresden codex correlated to a time the universe had started. Even more than that, they correlated that to our calendar, to help them date the hieroglyphics that they found. I think it is really interesting how they recreated what the Maya cities would have looked like, and how the civilizations would have been. I think one of the most important discoveries described in the video though was the one stilla of the Mayans has historical relevance. This discovery helped the archeologists to put together a much better picture of history and of life in Maya time. It is as close to written document as the historians are going to get, which makes it so cool that they found this discovery. | Another interesting thing I found in the video was the disappearance of language of hieroglyphics. I didn’t know that Maya’s were forced away from that language, and that many now did not know how to read it. I just kind of thought of it as a ‘dead language’ not as one that was a native language that had been purposely eliminated. That was one of the most interesting and saddest things that I found in the video. I wonder if the language of hieroglyphics had stayed more relevant if it would be easier for historians to find information about the culture, because they wouldn’t have to do as much language depiction.