The ruins at Chichen Itza archaeological site, in Mexico  were an important city in the state of Yucatan, where the ancient Maya culture was settled down around the years 435 and 455. Chichen Itza means on the edge of the well of the Itza.

There haven´t been many cultures as the Maya. The Maya were especially great astronomers, artists, architects and mathematicians. They built large cities in Mexico such as Uxmal, Sayil, Chichen Itza or Kabah, with majestic Mayan pyramids, which now represent an important cultural heritage, worthy of visiting. They invented the zero, an extremely important concept in mathematics. By some estimates, the calendar used by the Maya was more accurate than the Europeans when they arrived in America. Another significant achievement is that the Maya civilization was one of the three civilizations that invented a complete system of writing, through Mayan glyphs.

The history of knowledge of Maya writing begins with the Franciscan Friar Diego de Landa. A Spanish priest, difficult to understand: on the one hand, ordered the burning of a large number of Maya codices when he came to settle in Yucatan land, but on the other hand, wrote a book critical to the understanding of Maya culture in Yucatan, for which he was blamed and was ordered to return to Spain where he wrote his famous book Relación de cosas de Yucatán, which, in addition to the wealth of information about Mayan culture, provides valuable insight into his writing, and that you copied Maya glyphs describing some sounds. Also drew, the signs of the 20 days and 19 months of the Mayan calendar.

After a long time, Ernst Forstemann in 1886, came to understand the counting system based on 20,  used by the Maya to record dates and thus not only able to read the calendar computations of the codices, but also of the steles and other monuments of the Maya area.

Another important step in deciphering Maya writing, was given by the Russian Yuri Knorozov in 1952. Who compiled Landa´s information and could read phonetically certain glyphs that represent syllables. At first, his research was not accepted at all, because many researchers thought that Maya writing was only ideographic, but time has proved Knorozov was right.

1958, Heinrich Berlin, noted that a glyph is placed at the end of many of the Mayan texts and that the main element of the glyph, varied from place to place, so he concluded that the component related to a particular site, or the ruling dynasty there. These glyphs have been called glyphs, and emblems have been identified in most of the central Mayan hieroglyphics have monuments.

The next step was the article published in 1960 by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, which showed the historical context of the Maya inscriptions that, for a long time, it was believed were essentially calendaric. The researcher noted that compared to some temples were placed stelae groups whose dates coincided with the normal life span of a ruler and began to read the glyphs indicative of the birth and rise of the kings to the throne.

Currently, much work to fully understand the Maya script (consisting of about 700 signs), but day by day, progress is made to yield valuable insight into that culture.

Ask your travel agents about the available tours to Chichen Itza to know more about the Mayan Glyphs.