Chris Higgins
NOVA: Cracking the Maya Code
by Chris Higgins - April 10, 2008 - 6:31 PM

This week’s NOVA has a great story: Cracking the Maya Code explains how Mayan glyphs were deciphered — a truly difficult problem with a satisfying solution. The decipherment is a surprising adventure involving limited (and often incorrect) examples of the glyphs themselves, Cold War rivalries, the youngest ever recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award (David Stuart received it at age 18), and some good old-fashioned linguistics.

My favorite part is how this Russian linguist (Yuri Knorosov) answered some major questions about Mayan glyphs, only to have work ignored by Westerners for political reasons:

Yuri Knorozov

(As far as we know, the cat had nothing to do with the affair.)

In a poignant note, the program includes brief interviews with Dr. Kathryn Josserand (who died in Palenque in 2006). She oversaw my senior internship in FSU’s Anthropology Department, when I was working on connecting databases to websites (a fairly high-tech thing at the time), and had done a ton of original research collecting and cataloging Mesoamerican glyphs.

You can watch the whole show online in QuickTime or Windows Media format for free. Also interesting: a brief preview of the show, and other interactive bits.

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Comments (6)

  1. If this is they type of picture he took, I don’t know if I’d trust him either, but that cat looks pretty sinister too. I’m glad to see tv making it’s way online for free, even if it’s educational work that’s fine in my book.

    posted by Frank Reese on 4-10-2008 at 8:06 pm

  2. If this is they type of picture he took, I don’t know if I’d trust him either, but that cat looks pretty sinister too. I’m glad to see tv making it’s way online for free, even if it’s educational work that’s fine in my book.

    posted by Frank Reese on 4-10-2008 at 8:07 pm

  3. Can’t wait to watch the program! My most favorite/memorable class I took in college was an honors class called the Anthropology of Native Amercian Art. I loved this subject matter.

    Thanks for sharing.

    posted by bre on 4-11-2008 at 8:20 am

  4. I wish I had a picture of myself looking totally BA and holding a cat. Maybe if I get bored this weekend.

    posted by kate on 4-11-2008 at 9:03 am

  5. Cats. Never trust ‘em. Especially Commie cats.

    posted by airship on 4-11-2008 at 9:09 am

  6. Ha! When I first glanced at that picture, I could have sworn he was holding a gun.

    posted by Pointy-Hatted Geek on 4-11-2008 at 9:42 pm

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