Clay tablets reveal astonishing details about daily life 5,000 years ago, and tell the story of the invention of writing. Symbols can be the gateway to the hearts and minds of ancient people. Their decipherment is one of the greatest challenges facing archaeologists today. We humans are social animals. Our need to communicate is universal. Some of our messages can be easily understood. But we communicate, too, through abstract symbols that have meaning only within a particular culture. These symbols take many forms. The flag is a symbol. A gesture says, were number one. The uniform is a symbol that identifies the official and the player. The game itself is symbolic ritualized combat with clearly defined rules. Even sound can be a symbol. [ whistle blows ] the whistle signals the end of play. But why a whistle . Why not a gong . Why a striped shirt and not a plaid one . The choice is arbitrary. But within this culture, the meaning is mutually accepted. The use of symbols is the single most distinguishing feature of any culture. But as distinct as they are, all symbols are used for the same purpose to communica, manipulate, and preserve information. The circle of coral symbolizes the night sky. But this lesson depends on the use of language, a symbolic system in which arbitrary sounds are joined together and given meaning. Of all symbolic systems, language best communicates very complex ideas. Here, celestial navigation is taught on a South Pacific island. We begin to learn language and other symbolic systems at birth. In time, they become a part of who we are and how we perceive the world. Still, its difficult for those of us in one culture to fully understand the symbolic systems of another. For archaeologists, the task is even more complex. The cultures they study can no longer be directly observed. Archaeologist David Webster. Webster suppose i came into this stadium a week, or even a century, after all the people left. How would i figure out what happened here . What this arena was used for . This is the dilemma facing archaeologists. Symbols are of fundamental importance in understanding any human culture because theyre so laden with meaning. But theyre not very durable, and even if we find them, often we cant decode them. In this case, though, im in luck because of this writing. Writing is a set of graphic symbols that is directly or indirectly related to language. Keach we use writing to convey very specific information, from introducing team members to explaining the referees hand signals. This detailed guide brings the stadium to life. But archaeology is never this simple. Archaeologists rarely find Program Notes to ancient societies. If writing exists in a society, it usually serves very specific purposes. And like any other kind of symbolic system, it has to be decoded and deciphered. In fact, comprehending ancient symbolic systems of all kinds is one of the most difficult tasks that archaeologists face. Keach copan, home of the ancient maya in western honduras. A rich legacy of architecture and art has been found here symbols of another time left to be read by scientists today. Early explorers made careful drawings of these sites. They thought the ornate monuments contained writing writing that, in time, would reveal the history of the ancient ruins. In 1840, explorer John Lloyd Stephens wrote, standing as they do in the depth of a tropical forest, silent and solemn, their whole history so entirely unknown. With hieroglyphics explaining all, but perfectly unintelligible. Who shall read them . Could anyone read these odd markings . For more than a century, they tried. But the story of the maya people, if these glyphs could reveal it, remained locked in stone. Had the maya recorded their history . Many ancient people who used writing did not. In fact, writing was first used for a very different purpose. Around 8000 b. C. , the worlds earliest farmers had settled in mesopotamia, a region of the middle east that includes iraq and iran. In their hands, desert became rich farmland, as iigation agriculture was born. The people bartered for goods and paid taxes. Recordkeeping was begun, with goods represented by abstract tokens. These led to writing, according to denise schmandtbesserat, professor of mideastern studies. Schmandtbesserat each of these shapes was meaningful. The cone probably stood for a unit of grain, a small unit of grain. The disc probably for an even larger unit of grain. One animal and one animal meaning in the middle east one goat or one sheep. So how do the tokens lead to writing . Well, it took a long time. Keach it took nearly 4,000 years. But around 3500 b. C. , in a culture known as sumer, the worlds first cities emerged. Now, a more complex economy required more complex recordkeeping. Accountants took a ball of clay which they poked inside with the fingers to make a cavity. You know, its just like a tennis ball of clay or even smaller. And once they had a good cavity, they would put inside tokens, and then a flap would be put on top, and all of this was closed. And we are in prewriting time. And at that time every sumerian had a seal. And when the stone is pressed onto the surface of the envelope, it leaves then a design which is then the mark of the person or the administration involved. Keach with these seals, up to four parties could sign a transaction. These envelopes could hold several tokens securely. But there was no way to know the contents until accountants began to press the tokens into the clay before dropping them inside. The system quickly evolved. It did not take a long time for these accountants to realize why should we have this complicated system . They could just as well have a ball of clay upon which they would impress signs. And these are the first clay tablets. They d not need, any longer, to put the tokens inside. Keach and so the ancient accountants took yet another step towards writing. Instead of pressing the tokens into the clay, they began to draw them. And they began to use abstract numbers. Previously, a token was impressed once for each measure it represented. 12 impressions meant 12 jars of oil. Now, the commodity was drawn once. A jar of oil. Tokens symbolized numbers. A sphere meant 10, and a cone meant 1. So on this tablet is recorded 10, 11, 12 jars of oil. The number of graphic symbols was expanded quickly, as scribes sought to express more complex ideas. A star shape, to represent god or heaven. A head plus a bowl, for the verb to eat. Over time, the symbols themselves evolved into the wedgeshaped characters called cuneiform. But the greatest advance came when scribes began to use cuneiform to represent the sounds of spoken sumerian. The word an meant heaven but was also used to represent the sound an in words like anbar, meaning iron and anta, meaning above. For the very first time in human history, people could make a permanent record of their spoken language. But sumerian hasnt been spoken since about 2000 b. C. How could these markings be read . Professor erle leichty. Leichty we get passages that we dont understand, and we get tablets that we have extreme difficulty reading, but we do know the language. We know it primarily because of ancient dictionaries. The people that lived at the time made bilingual dictionaries between akkadian and sumerian. And akkadian is a semitic language closely related to hebrew and arabic. So that was much easier for us. Keach the tablets contained specific records of daytoday living. The worlds oldest known medical text, with remedies of snake skin, turtle shell and figs. A detailed map of the ancient city of nippur. Even the price of tin in the twentyfirst century b. C. Historian marvin powell. In this line we see the amount of silver written across here. And in this line we see the amount of tin that it buys. And after this we also find the name of the individual, a chap called lucin from nippur, who was engaged in the tin trade. Keach names and places, professions and materials from the ancient world come to life. The tablets offer astonishing details of a way of life that ended thousands of years ago. But the sumerian symbols held more than a story of business. They preserved centuries of hymns, poems, myths even an early version of the biblical tale of noah and the great flood. Writing has helped reveal the history of ancient sumer. In the heartland of the maya, another time capsule awaits discovery. What stories lie locked within these strange symbols . Decipherment of the maya glyphs began with the discovery of rare maya books, survivors of the tropical climate and the spanish conquest. Archaeologist george stuart. Stuart this is a color facsimile of the dresden codex actual size, real colors. Its made on, like the others, on bark paper sized with lime plaster, on which the images were painted with fine hair brushes and pigment in about, oh, five or six different colors. Keach many of these books were discovered by the sixteenth century spanish. They were said to be filled with genealogies, prophesies and religious beliefs. But to the spanish conquerors, they were blasphemous. In 1562, bishop diego de landa ordered them destroyed. We found a large number of books in these characters, and as they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which caused them much affliction. Ironically, a book by bishop landa himself proved crucial to the understanding of maya writing. Stuart and in it is everything that he observed in yucatan about the maya, about their ceremonial cycles, their ritual calendars. He even had pictures of the glyphs drawn to put in the manuscript. And without that, we would know very little firsthand about the maya. Keach with landa as a guide, the nature of the ancient maya books became clear. They were almanacs used by priests to plan rituals. The bars and dots are numbers a dot for one, a bar for five. These two symbols formed the basis of a highly sophisticated mathematical system. It was used to record the movements of venus and of the moon and sun. Astronomical events were linked to events on earth through elaborate calculations of time. Stuart they were operating with a fairly complicated kind of calendar. It counted the days in several systems. There was a 260day cycle, a 365day cycle, and then there was the great overriding cycle by which they really tamed eternity. And that was the long count. Keach with the long count, the maya measured time from a beginning point thousands of years in the past. On this stela, or freestanding monument at copan, long count glyphs compute the passage of 1,403,800 days since the maya calendar began. Beyond the long count, the maya also noted this date in ritual, lunar, and solar calendars. All of this to record a single day. And when was that on the western calendar . Archaeologists again referred to landas book. Bishop landa said that, hey, these people are celebrating new years day on 12 kan, zero pop, and thats july 16, 1556. And knowing that, and knowing that an eclipse is mentioned on a certain date in the dresden codex, we can begin to put all of those together and come up with a system that matches and is consistent throughout. Keach archaeologists could now place the maya in the context of world history. Most maya inscriptions date from a. D. 300 to 900. But what had they written . The meaning of the other glyphs remained a mystery. A bizarre picture of the maya was beginning to emerge. Stuart these texts were accompanied by figures, scenes. And since they didnt understand anything but the dates, there was no way of telling who was depicted or what the scene was about. And thinking that perhaps the figures were priests, and here was a gentle people obsessed with time and nothing else, the maya began to take on a nonhuman aspect. Here was the strangest race of people that ever lived sort of gentle astronomers, forever gazing toward the sky and never doing anything that other people did. Keach Twentieth Century scholars wanted to believe in an idealized maya past no wars, no power struggles, no economic turmoil. But in the 1940s, evidence uncovered at magnificent ruins like palenque in northern mexico began to change this notion of a peaceful maya. Archaeologists investigated a structure known as the temple of the inscriptions. The buildings upper level seemed imposingly solid. But beneath it, archaeologists discovered a hidden staircase. It had been deliberately blocked with rubble in ancient times. It took three years to clear the debris. A hundred feet down, at the base of the staircase, lay one of the most magnificent maya tombs ever found. At its heart lay a limestone sarcophagus. Might these images carved on its surface reveal more about the ancient grave site . Archaeologist peter matthews. In 1952, the hieroglyphics could not be read either in this tomb inscription or anywhere else at palenque, apart from the dates. And it was considered at that stage that most of the burials that were dug up were those of priests. Keach the burial itself was proof of the extraordinary power and wealth of the deceased. The entire temple had been constructed around his elaborate tomb. But who was buried within . A jade portrait had masked his face. Would the rich symbolism reveal the dead mans true identity . In 1960, archaeologist Tatiana Proskouriakoff provided an answer. Her discovery launched a revolution in maya studies. For three decades, proskouriakoff had been drawing archaeologically based reconstructions of maya sites. The grand maya ruins were interpreted as vast ceremonial centers, the sites of elaborate rituals. Carved monuments were thought to portray maya priests and gods. The extensive inscriptions carved on them were thought to have no historical value. But here in Piedras Negras, guatemala, the dates on the monuments struck proskouriakoff as very curious. Several of the stelae at this remarkable site bear scenes like this. Footsteps lead from the base of the stela up along a ladder, then disappear into a niche, to reveal a seated figure. Was this a maya god . On stelae like this, proskouriakoff noted two prominent dates. The first was always followed by this glyph. The second, between one and three decades later, was followed by this glyph. The pattern of the dates together with the scene depicted led to a startling hypothesis. Perhaps these stelae depicted not gods, but kings, maya kings on their ascent to power. Might the glyphs have recorded their births and ascent to the throne . Proskouriakoff carefully charted these dates. Then she theorized that as each new ruler was seated the previous ruler had died. From the birth of one ruler to the ascent of the next, the span of dates never exceeded a human lifetime. Clearly, this is not a portrait of a god, but of a young king on a throne. From below, he is watched by a woman perhaps his wife or mother. For the first time, the glyphs were revealing maya history. Stuart somebody came up and said you hear that tatiana is working on a dynasty, a king list from Piedras Negras . And everybody went, oh, come on, this just cant be true. And i remember that vividly. And then i remember afterwards, when the publication came out, how clear it all looked. It was as if we only had a hint of what the maya were. We thought they were astronomers and priests. And then all of a sudden, the glass is wiped clean, and there are people looking through. There are kings and mothers and children and regular people. It was a very refreshing time. Keach so the ancient glyphs might reveal grand stories of the maya rulers. Still, scholars could only interpret isolated symbols. To read the ancient texts, they would have to understand the spoken language. In the bustling marketplace of a mexican village, archaeologists find traces of the ancient maya system of symbols. They can be seen in the traditional patterns of brightly colored clothing. They can be heard in the mayan languages still spoken in central america. Over the centuries, the words have changed, but still they echo the past. The maya have not used hieroglyphs since the sixteenth century, when spanish bishop landa made his observations of life in the yucatan. At that time, landa recorded what he called a mayan abc. But this alphabet didnt make sense until scholars realized that landa had misunderstood just how the maya wrote. Linda schele deciphers mayan texts. The maya used two kinds of signs to spell things. One is called a logograph because it represents a whole word. The other is a phonetic sign that represents a syllable. For instance, if they wanted to spell the word jaguar, they could just use a picture of the animal. The word for jaguar in maya is balam, okay . Now any maya who saw the jaguar head is going to say balam, just like youre an english speaker, you see the jaguar, youd say jaguar. But there is more than one cat. So they could draw their jaguar head. And they could put a sign in front of it that tells you how to pronounce the first part of the word as ba. This is ba. Or they could put at the end of it a sign that tells you whathe final sound was. This is a ma. But they could also if they wanted to just eliminate the jaguar head and spell it completely with syllables, so that you would have ba. La. Ma. And you dont pronounce the last a. Keach the glyphs recorded by bishop landa were, in fact, syllables 27 syllables. But hundreds of syllables were needed to record ancient mayan. Maya scribes often carved these glyphs in fanciful ways to resemble animals or people. The creativity and innovation of maya scribes is one of the joys and challenges of deciphering. David stuart, george stuarts son, has been decoding maya glyphs since he was a boy. Today, he is one of the worlds leading epigraphers, scholars who decipher ancient texts. Stuart the decipherment process may begin with a single inscription or a single glyph in an inscription that will provide a really telling clue about what the phonetic value for the sign might be. To look at an example, theres an inscription from a site in northern yucatan that has a glyph that makes use of this sign that no one can read or could read before. And its one of two signs in the spelling. The first one is one we actually know from landas original alphabet, ma. And here is our unknown sign. And we know from the glyphs around it that its talking about a certain individual who is an artist. Keach together, these two glyphs form a word that describes an individual. It begins with the glyph on the left, ma. In a mayanspanish dictionary, stuart looks for mayan words that begin with ma. Stuart and it turns out that mats means one who is knowledgeable or wise. And so mats seems to make sense in this context, and we can use that to propose that the second previously unknown sign might be tsa. So you get the spelling matsa for mats, or someone who is wise. Keach so the glyph on the right might read tsa. The last a is not pronounced, so the word is mats. Can the tsa glyph be confirmed elsewhere . In different handwriting, it looks like this as discovered in this stone carving. The glyph accompanies a scene that shows a woman conjuring up a spirit. Below the tsa glyph is a known glyph, ku. Together they spell tsak, a mayan word meaning to conjure. And the tsa glyph is confirmed. It can be added to this chart of known maya syllables. Tsa. But many glyphs convey ideas and imagery not found in dictionaries