In the documentary Cracking the Maya Code, we follow the process of how the glyphs were deciphered by a team of archaeologists, artists, adventurers, and linguistists. The reason why nobody could understand the glyphs stemmed in the 16th century when the Spanish Inquisition came to the “New World”. Diego De Landa played a major role in the destruction of the Maya code, his mission was to convert the Mayan to Catholicism. However, he saw them as “devil worshipers” as they believe in making offerings to their many gods, therefore he slaughtered and tortured a great number of them. The aftermath resulted in the survival of only four books. The Mayan of still hold dear to their heritage but cannot comprehend the writing of their ancestors.
The …show more content…
She was an archaeologist at the time of the Great Depression and so happened to discover an ad to do drawing of ruins. Thus, began a very successful artistic reconstruction of these ruins for two decades. After two decades, she discovered that the stelae was telling the life story of a king and the subsequent ascension of the throne to other kings, while she was at Harvard’s Peabody Museum as a researcher. This was a very important discovery because for the first time someone was able to decipher these stelae as kings when most believed them to be …show more content…
Linda Schele met Robertson on a visit to the site as she was an art professor with a great fascination in the art of the Maya. Schele and Robertson began to work together and this allowed for Schele to gain a great deal of information about the site. In 1973, Robertson hosted a conference in Palenque, this in turn allowed for Peter Mathews and Schele to meet. Together they would go on to discover royal names go with a royal title in the front of the glyph. With this key information, they were able to pinpoint one king that stood out from the rest, “Lord Shield”. They learned that the panels in the Temple of the Inscriptions were telling the life story of Lord Shield. This discovery brought closure to a previous discovery of a sarcophagus made in 1948. It was concluded that the sarcophagus was Lord Shield’s and Schele would go on to discovery the rest of the dynasty of
The …show more content…
She was an archaeologist at the time of the Great Depression and so happened to discover an ad to do drawing of ruins. Thus, began a very successful artistic reconstruction of these ruins for two decades. After two decades, she discovered that the stelae was telling the life story of a king and the subsequent ascension of the throne to other kings, while she was at Harvard’s Peabody Museum as a researcher. This was a very important discovery because for the first time someone was able to decipher these stelae as kings when most believed them to be …show more content…
Linda Schele met Robertson on a visit to the site as she was an art professor with a great fascination in the art of the Maya. Schele and Robertson began to work together and this allowed for Schele to gain a great deal of information about the site. In 1973, Robertson hosted a conference in Palenque, this in turn allowed for Peter Mathews and Schele to meet. Together they would go on to discover royal names go with a royal title in the front of the glyph. With this key information, they were able to pinpoint one king that stood out from the rest, “Lord Shield”. They learned that the panels in the Temple of the Inscriptions were telling the life story of Lord Shield. This discovery brought closure to a previous discovery of a sarcophagus made in 1948. It was concluded that the sarcophagus was Lord Shield’s and Schele would go on to discovery the rest of the dynasty of