Deciphering Mayan History Trivia Quiz

Answer: Maya were obsessed with war and human sacrifice

Sir Arthur Thompson died in 1975. He propounded the glory of the Maya and innate gentleness of the Mayan civilization. He appears to have been led to these conclusions by misinterpreting what the glyphs actually meant. The most recent phonetic decipherment of Mayan glyphs shows that the Maya were obsessed with war and prone to some extremely unpleasant practices. Probably the highest goal of these extremely lineage-proud dynasts was to capture the ruler of another city-state in battle and torture and humiliate him, sometimes for years.

When they were finished with their royal captive they would decapitate him after first forcing him to play a ball game which he had no chance of winning.

Answer: Numbers

Numbers were the first part of the Mayan writing system to be deciphered. This decipherment took place during the 19th century and the Mayan numbering system turned out to be very sophisticated.
For example: a shell symbolized a zero, a dot stood for 1, and a bar for 5, and so on.

Answer: Fray Diego de Landa

Fray Diego de Landa (1524-79) was bishop of Yucatan (south east Mexico) from 1572 until his death in 1579. Whilst attempting to understand the Maya and their system of writing he also, possibly for religious reasons, went to great lengths to obliterate much of what he discovered.

He seems to have loved the Maya whilst at the same time having no compunction about physically torturing them. It is known that he regarded the Maya as 'moral' beings worthy of salvation, a view not held by his Catholic superiors and one which got him into considerable trouble.

He burned most of the surviving Mayan codices but left enough for future scholars to decipher accurately.

Answer: What do you say, we do not understand you

Yucatan or in the Mayan, 'uicathan,' was a word used by Mayans when being interrogated by the Spanish about the name of their land. Upon being asked repeatedly by the Spanish, "What is your land called?" they responded with, "Uicathan (what do you say, we do not understand you)" which is hardly surprising as they spoke not a word of Spanish.

The area in question then became known as Yucatan.

Answer: A Mayan book

The Dresden Codex is one of the only four surviving 'books' of the ancient Maya of Central America. Probably painted by Mayan scribes some time before the Spanish conquest of Mexico it contains hieroglyphs and animal symbols and it is full of dates and astronomical calculations.

The 'book' is in fact a folding screen that folds out much like a travel guide and has a length of almost 12 feet. It was taken by Cortes to Europe in 1739 where, reputedly, it was purchased by the royal library of the court of Saxony in Dresden.

Answer: Yuri Knorosov

Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov was possibly the first to get on to the completely right track with the decipherment of Mayan glyphs. He published his first work (in Russian) in 1952. Unfortunately, the middle part of the 20th century was dominated by the opinions of Sir Arthur Thompson who favoured a different but, as is now accepted, incorrect approach.

It was many years before Knorosov's work became fully recognised and accepted depite the many important papers that he published. Sir Arthur Thompson bitterly attacked Knorosov's work and began what was almost a vendetta against him.

However, younger Mayanists (mainly from the USA) were coming to the fore, and they realised that Knorosov was onto something of vital importance. Knorosov finally managed to get to Central America in 1990 when he visited the Maya ruins in Guatemala.

Answer: Turkey

In 1876 Leon de Rosny, by applying the Landa alphabet to the first sign in the Madrid Codex, dicovered that this entire glyph meant turkey. Rosny went on to make highly educated guesses and proposed that Mayan writing was a phonetic system based on syllables.

His ideas were rejected by the likes of Thompson who favoured a logographic explanation and it was left to Knorosov to finally prove that Mayan writing was indeed phonetic.

Answer: Dog

Yuri Knorosov, taking de Rosny's work a stage further, noticed that the first sign of the dog glyph was identical to that of the second sign of the turkey glyph. If the first sign in the dog glyph had the sound value of tzu, which by now was known to be so, then it followed that the second sign could be read as 'l', thus reading - 'tzul', meaning dog.

Answer: 18

The Maya increased the day count by simply adding a third (pictorial) wheel to their calender. The Mayan month had 20 days with the exception of one month which had 5 days.

Answer: Speaking with the throat unconstricted or constricted

It was Bishop Fray Diego de Landa who discovered that these changes, constriction of the throat whilst speaking, made all the difference to understanding what a Mayan actually meant when he spoke. For example: 'cutz' = turkey: 'kutz' = tobacco. 'muk' = to permit:
'muc' = to bury.