The ancient Mayans built huge pyramids, were masters of mathematics and left behind a written language using around 800 cryptic characters – which have yet to be deciphered in their entirety. Researchers at the University of Bonn aim to spend 15 years exploring the Mayan hieroglyphs, in order to write a complete dictionary of Mayan! A 10-person team will have to research and digitise around 10,000 inscriptions that were created between 250 BC and 900 AD, says the Project’s leader, Professor Nikolai Grube.
”We have to find the key to the writing, to be able to get a better insight into the ancient culture,” the Professor says.
The grammar and spelling of the Mayan language will also be explored. Fortunately, even today, 6 to 8 million people in Mexico and Guatemala speak languages with Mayan roots. Through language comparison, the researchers hope to reconstruct classical Mayan.
The long-term project is being funded by 5.4 million euros (7.3 million dollars) of State and Federal money. 30 to 40 per cent of the Mayan hieroglyphics haven’t been deciphered yet. “It’s like a crossword puzzle,” says Grube. “The more we will solve, the easier it will become to fill in the white boxes.” There will be surprises though. Researchers have now discovered that there
were eastern and western dialects of the Mayan language. The work must be as fascinating as it was for Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832), when he deciphered the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians. The amazing thing is the similarities between the continents. For example, structural affinities can be found between how ancient Mayans handled syllables or vowel symbols, Grube says.
In the West many people connect Mayan civilisation with doomsday fantasies. “The Mayans were obsessed with calendars,” Grube says. “Everything was dated exactly.” This mathematical obsession facilitates the hieroglyphic researchers today, because the Mayans even meticulously dated all their writings.
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