Hieroglyphics

By: Katie

This picture shows some of the glyphs that the Mesoamerican people would use, it shows how they would set up their sentences.

What are hieroglyphics?

Many people, when they think of hieroglyphics, think of Egyptian hieroglyphics – however, they weren’t the only people who used them. Ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphics and Egyptian hieroglyphics were both created by the indigenous people from their lands, they were both made with the intentions to spread information. The Ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphics were made by the Mayan people of Mesoamerica. They include scribes of what the Mayan peoples' lives were like and they also had many stones talking about politics. The ancient hieroglyphics were put on upright slabs (also known as stelae). They would also put their glyphs on things that they would make, like pottery or tapestries. The ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphics were made around 500 B.C.E. and were used all of the way until 1250 C.E., between classic and postclassic ancient Mesoamerica.

This is a picture of their hieroglyphics.

How did they impact the people of mesoamerica?

Ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphics largely impacted the development of discovering what the ancient Mayan people would tell the world about their lives. The ancient Mesoamerican people needed the system of hieroglyphics to keep track of important events within the civilization. They would write down dates and what happened during their time with these hieroglyphics. Many kings, queens, or rulers were recorded on these scribes, stones, pottery, etc... Another way that the ancient Mesoamerican hieroglyphics impacted them was how advanced they were. They were one of the first writing systems ever and are quite impressive. To summarize, the ancient Mayan people would oftentimes express their beliefs and showed their artistic attributes through hieroglyphics.

This is a stone of an important political ruler named Chan Muán

How do we decipher the mesoamerican hieroglyphics?

The ancient Mesoamerica hieroglyphics were made up of pictographs and symbols. They used everyday objects from life for what they would write on their scribes and stones. One example of this is how they would use a drawing of an eye for the word "I". A lot of their words were simple and monosyllabic and they are the same as the English alphabet when it came to consonants and vowels. The Mayans used the “sandwich method”, they would put the vowels inside of the consonants (like the word “fig”). These Mesoamerican used the Hieroglyphic and phonetic signs (a character to represent a sound). It took a long time for historians to figure out how to read ancient Mayan hieroglyphics, we have only been able to decipher some dates and names since the 20th century. They used to think that each glyph was represented as a whole word. In the 1950s Yury Knorozov explained how the ancient Mesoamericans used both hieroglyphics and phonics and that helped so many people understand hieroglyphics better. Another thing that the historians did not even think about was how they did not write their words top to bottom and left to right. The Mayans wrote things very differently from how people today write.

Did you Know?

A ruler named Chan Muán had murals and carvings with hieroglyphics about his life.

Did you know?

Hieroglyphics were made with the intentions to inform the people about important events.

This is an upright stone.

This is a structure built by the Mayans.

This is a map of Mesoamerica with some of the ancient civilizations highlighted.

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