Tuesday's class sparked my interest on how Mayas made paper and if they have a substantial paper written history. Mayas carved in stone, painted, etc. Did the content differ based on if it were a book or was carved in to stone? Are there multiple symbols for one word? These are just some questions I had regarding the Maya writing system.
I have seen many carvings of Maya Hieroglyphs, but few using paper. However, I learned they did use paper, called Huun paper that was made out of a certain plant. The video below demonstrates a modernized version of the Maya ancient paper making techniques.
The Maya people used paper to form books called codices (or singular: codex.) They made long sheets of paper that were folded up to make books of approximately 39 leaves, with writing on both sides.
Unfortunately, only four major books are known to have survived today. The picture is from the Dreysex Codice, which is the largest codex found to date. Remains of disintegrated pages have been found from other codices, but most are unfortunately illegible. Thus, we do not know much about what they wrote on paper as compared to the plethora of information we know regarding their stone carvings. The Mayas are evidence that stone survives better than paper. I wonder what Maya secrets were lost in burnt or disintegrated codices? We will never know.
Unfortunately, only four major books are known to have survived today. The picture is from the Dreysex Codice, which is the largest codex found to date. Remains of disintegrated pages have been found from other codices, but most are unfortunately illegible. Thus, we do not know much about what they wrote on paper as compared to the plethora of information we know regarding their stone carvings. The Mayas are evidence that stone survives better than paper. I wonder what Maya secrets were lost in burnt or disintegrated codices? We will never know.
I don't know what brought about the creation of these books, but they were made before the Spanish conquest in 1540 (Source). Thus, they were created long before a Western world could influence their systems.
It's interesting how separate civilizations have created similar ways to make resources such as paper in order to record important information regarding their civilization. Is paper universal? Has every civilization ever created some form of writing system? How do these hieroglyphs evolve? I see some similarity to Egyptian hieroglyphs in writing; however, they can't be connected, can they? What are the correlations? How do such separate civilizations develop similar similar systems? These are some questions I want to investigate as I study writing systems.
Well those are a lot of questions, so I am going to pick just one to comment on: "Has every civilization ever created some form of writing system?"
ReplyDeleteI think the best answer to this question is "No, but these civilizations eventually fail because of it." Many Native American civilizations lacked writing systems when Europeans began colonizing(/invading) the Americas. The Cherokee, for example, did not have a written language until the nineteenth century. Today, of course, there is no great Cherokee nation; their civilization has not died out, but it has certainly been reduced in number.
It's also interesting to look at powerful civilizations and when their writing systems began. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there have been four areas that have ever been truly grand world powers since the Renaissance: Western Europe (including the US), Russia, China, and Japan. When we think about civilizations in the past that had a strong written tradition, there are really two areas that come to mind: the Mediterranean (Greece/Rome) and China. As the former accounts for Western Europe and the latter accounts for China and Japan (whose written language is Chinese-based to an extent), this really only leaves Russia, which has both Western and Eastern influences in its writing system. So it's interesting that the civilizations that developed (or adopted) great writing systems are the ones that have risen to world power in the last 500 years.
I've made paper kind of like that, however it was made from lint. But we used those wooden guides and presses. It was a time consuming process just to make one small piece of paper. But I'm sure it was easier to make the paper than write on stone.
ReplyDelete