Maya used “sign language” at the altar about 1,300 years ago, and these signs could represent important dates on Maya’s long calendar, new research argues.
“This was able to show that, as far as I know, everyone has a genuine, well defined script,” and was able to show that there is a hand sign on par with Rich Sandoval, a linguist of another kind of writing research author who is a linguist at Metropolitan State University in Denver. “Other researchers and I are pretty confident that these hand sign practices are rooted in sign language.”
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In this study, Sandoval, published in the Philosophical Society Journal Transaction on March 8th, analyzed Altar Q, a rectangular Mayan stone altar from the late 8th century on Copan, a Honduras archaeological site. The four intricately carved sides of Altar Q depict a total of 16 Copan rulers, each with a specific hand position and hieroglyphics.
Researchers have been studying Altar Q since the mid-1800s and now called “one of the most famous crafts of ancient Mesoamerica,” Sandoval writes that one can learn more about stone carvings from this classical era (AD 250-900) by looking at the hand of the ruler. In fact, he said that the ruler has a particular hand position in much of Mayan art.
“Almost everywhere [Maya] Hieroglyphs, you may hold numbers, often in the center, at least one number, sometimes multiple numbers, very unique hand shapes.
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His interpretation suggests that Maya, which flourished during the classic period of some civilizations in southern Mexico and Central America, had a writing system using two written scripts, Sandoval explained.
“Many researchers previously thought hieroglyphic scripts were the only scripts in the Mayan writing system,” he said. His research shows that “the writing system has two scripts,” Sandoval added.
Maya Lighting System
The known Maya writing system consists of over 1,000 hieroglyphs representing words and syllables, many of which have not yet been resolved or well understood. Altar Q has both hieroglyphics and hand signs, so Sandoval used it as a kind of rosetta stone. This is an ancient Egyptian command, translated into three ancient scripts. However, Sandoval believes that unlike Rosetta Stone, the Altar Q hand sign communicates a different kind of information than hieroglyphs. In other words, they are not translations of each other.
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According to the survey, the east, west, south, north, or paneled hand signs of Altar Q represent dates 9.0.2.0.0 (November 27, 437), 9.19.10.0.0 (April 30, 820), 9.16.13.12.0 (October 21, 764), and 9.17.5.0.15 (January 776). For these dates to make sense, it is important to understand how long count calendars work.
Dates in long count calendars are represented by five “blocks” separated by periods. From left, these blocks are called B’ak’tun, K’atun, Tun, Uinal, K’in. For example, the long count date 9.19.10.0.0 represents nine B’ak’tuns, 19 K’atuns, 10 Tuns, zero UInals, and zerokins. One K’in is one day. One is 20 k’in, or a day. One ton is 18 uinal. One K’atun is 20 tons. 1 b’ak’tun is 20 K’atuns, or 144,000 days. Maya believed that 13 b’ak’tuns (13.0.0.0.0) constituted the complete cycle of creation. December 21, 2012 marked the end of the cycle that began on August 13, 3114 BC
The hieroglyphs on Altar Q were already known to imply the use of a long count calendar in the description of the 64-day ritual. The start date of this ritual coincides with the end of the period. This is a long count day that ends with at least two zeros representing a critical step in the calendar. As experts have pointed out earlier, hieroglyphs indicate that the Copan dynasty began and ended roughly at the beginning and end of the ninth Bakhtun.
Related: Early evidence of Mayan fortune telling calendars discovered in ancient temples
However, Sandoval emphasized the oddity. There were no dates in the long count calendar directly expressed anywhere in the altar hieroglyphics. This was very unusual in royal Mayan texts.
As for the signature of the hand itself, anthropologists focused on each of the free hands of the 16 rulers. (Most of them hold something to something else.) By comparing the 16 hand signs with hieroglyphs, he pointed out two important characteristics. The two different hand signs look like variants of known hieroglyphics of zeros, and the pattern of distribution for other hand signs is similar to those of zeros with long counting periods ending the date.
Therefore, Sandoval assumed that the two-handed signs represent zeros and the 16-handed signs constituted four long count dates at the ninth b’ak’tun. “The meaning is that the hand signs on each panel encode K’atun, Tun, Winal. [an alternative spelling for uinal] And reading from left to right, the k’in value of the long count date,” he wrote in his study.
As for the value of B’ak’tun, Sandoval claims it is represented by the top rim of each panel and the four ruler heads, a bar and dot composition that looks like the upside down hieroglyphlic nine. Research shows that both No. 9 and the upside-down side are related to Death and Mayan underworld.
tie it all together
At this point, Sandoval has returned to Hieroglyphs. This includes dates written in calendar rounds, another Maya calendar system that deals with short cycles of time. He found an astonishing prevalence of number 16. For example, the coefficients for the calendar round dates of the first and last rulers of throne and death are 16 each.
“16 is the most important number in this,” explained Sandoval. Additional hints for dates in the calendar included the orientational connection with nearby monumental texts and the assumption that each date should be linked to the underworld.
Finally, he linked the dates from each long calendar to important events and situations. The East Panel is the date of the death of the first ruler. The West Panel is the last ruler’s death date. The dates on the South Panel are related to the Patron of the 16th Ruler, and the dates on the North Panel take place 16 days after the start of the 64-day ritual of Altar Q.
“The reason I’m confident in my initial deciphering here and why it made me so convinced the reviewers is because I have multiple independent evidence from each other, but they all support the same findings,” explained Sandoval. “They are a bit weak in their own right, but together they serve as very strong support,” he added. “Observations act as validation because they are not dependent on each other.”
“Unbelievable” discovery
The Maya lighting system is extremely complicated. He integrated the two scripts using Text and Art designs, adding, “It’s a unique system in the world.” Previously, he investigated how Arapaho speakers, a Native American tribe that now have roots in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, mixed sign language and language.
But not everyone agrees with his conclusion. “It looks very incredible,” Alexandre Tocobinin, an anthropological archaeologist specializing in Mayan epics at the University of Alabama, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. “The visual and textual data appear to be manipulated to fit the author’s hypothesis.”
Nevertheless, Sandoval suggested that his partial deciphering underpins future decoding efforts.
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