Mayan Hieroglyphs

Deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphs has been a difficult and long process. Much of the Mayan history and knowledge was burnt away by Spanish inquisition in the sixteenth century. The Spanish believed the Mayans practiced devil worship, and there writing system was a tool for the devil. Many Mayans were tortured and jailed for crimes of devil worship, and forced to convert religions. The Spanish then burnt up thousands of the Mayan books, and people were tortured or burned at the stake if they were found writing in Mayan script. Mayan scribes were forced to learn European script, and the Mayan writing system died out in the century following the Spanish conquest. This caused centuries of struggle for these hieroglyphs to be read again.
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The figures were not gods like Thompson had believed, but actually Mayan kings. The stone tablets in front of the temples actually told the life stories of seven different kings, starting from their births. These tablets depicted important history of the Mayans, and the family history of the rulers.
The next advancement happened when a young Russian man found a book full of Mayan hieroglyphs. He was isolated from previous ideas about the hieroglyphs, which gave him a fresh perspective. Because of this, he wasn’t aware that the glyphs represented ideas. Instead he was able to find the glyphs contained word signs and phonetic signs, meaning the signs represented the sounds that the Mayans spoke.
Then in 1948, archeologists were able to decipher certain hieroglyphs in a temple that told the story of “Lord Shield”. These explorers were able to connect the glyphs to the remains of the ruler and found the hidden staircase that led to a crypt. In that crypt they found the Mayan king’s body. Years later, Dave Stewart found that many different signs can represent the same phonetic sound. One sound could have fifteen different symbols, and the symbols can be substituted with one another. The signs can also be overlapped and merged