GullibleAntelope t1_ix7cxih wrote on November 21, 2022 at 8:28 AM

Reply to comment by kingofcanada1 in Yuri Knorozov: The Maverick Scholar Who Cracked The Maya Code by tyrannosauru

>...burnt hundreds if not thousands of Mayan codices, in a tragedy for the study of history that's comparable to the fire at the libary of Alexanderia.

Some overstatement here? Was this Mayan language capable of informing on their way of life? Could it reference law, history, philosophy, important historical figures, as historical western languages could? Or did the destruction you speak of eradicate our ability to answer that Q?

>A source discussing a second way of Mayan communication:

>The Incas did not have a written language. Nonetheless, they adopted a unique system of recording information from their predecessors. This ancient “operating system,” called quipus, dates back to 2600 BCE. “They were like early computers, early counting machines,” says author and four-time Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker Kim MacQuarrie...

>A quipu, also spelled khipu, qipu or kipu, is an intricate system of knotted strings of various colors that store and convey information. Quipu literally translates to “knot” in Quechua. Many ancient Andean cultures used this knot system, including the Inca. Sometimes referred to as “talking knots,” they served as a writing system. This was crucial since there was no formal written language. Though just strings and knots, the arrangement was extremely precise and sophisticated, communicating everything from accounting to genealogy. Made from cotton or camelid fibers, quipus were portable making it easy to transfer information over distances and store over time.

Weren't quipu primarily used for accounting by taxation purposes by officials, and perhaps census information, and similarly could not convey information on law, history, customs....? Or is that wrong also?

FoolishConsistency17 t1_ix8etdz wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:25 PM

Quipu have nothing to do with Maya.

Maya glyphs are a full language, capable of replicating the sound of any word in the language phonetically. Those thousands of codices were almost certainly similar to the written records of every other civilization: myths, histories, genealogies, administrative records.

FuckingVeet t1_ix8czth wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:12 PM

We know full well that Maya Codices went well beyond purely administrative records, with the handful of surviving pieces offering tantalising glimpses into otherwise entirely lost traditions of literature. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they wouldn't have written their own treatises on Law, History, Philosophy and the like: the written language they had developed was fully capable of transmitting such information.

Quipu did primarily record numerical data for administrative purposes as you say, but even though they continued to be used after the Spanish Conquest (indeed, the Spanish promoted their use at several points) they aren't an entirely deciphered system, and compelling arguments have been made that, at least at one point, they represented a hybrid system that was being adapted to include other information. It is perhaps notable that, if Quipu had for their entire history of use remained a purely numerical device, they would be by far the longest-lived writing system to have done so, having been in continuous use for as much as 4000 years.