nudawn:

I was watching this fascinating documentary on Nova about the cracking of the Mayan script.  its like super complicated.

Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing. Maya writing was called “hieroglyphics” or “hieroglyphs” by early European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries who did not understand it but found its general appearance reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, to which however the Maya writing system is not at all related.

apparently they didnt figure it out till like the 70’s or 80’s.  i dont completely understand it, but instead of having one image mean one word or one letter, each correspondes to a sound.  but any particular sound could have like 20 different signs to represent it.  AND ON TOP OF THAT, whoever was writing the shit down, could take those different signs and mush them together and add a butterfly or flower or llama or whatever, just to make it pretty.  it almost sounded like an illuminated text that you had to translate with letters you got from a typewriter.

i mean, its fucking ART, but it was a bitch to figure out.