Note 145 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas, Historia apologética, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, A Study of the Manuscript Troano, Washington, 1882; "Notes on certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices," Sixth Report, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American Picture-Writing," First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 205-245; Brinton, Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan, New York, 1870; Essays of an Americanist, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 193-304; Léon de Rosny, Les écritures figuratives, Paris, 1870; L'interprétation des anciens textes Mayas, Paris, 1875; Essai sur le déchiffrement de l'écriture hiératique de l'Amérique Centrale, Paris, 1876; Förstemann, Erläuterungen der Maya Handschrift, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter might well have been a further development of the Mexican system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted to be alphabetic" (Taylor, The Alphabet, vol. i. p. 24); this statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego de Landa, whose work (Relation des choses de l'Yucatan, ed. Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.[Back to Main Text]