Double thanks to Prof. Lauren Sullivan! She teaches at both Tufts and UMass Boston. This week we presented our Introduction to Maya Writing Workshop to her Maya History class at UMass Boston. Last week we presented at her Mesoamerican class at Tufts. We’re always grateful for the opportunity to do our little workshop. Here’s a link to our worksheet.
The workshop starts with 15 minutes of lecture on the four things you need to know about the traditional Mayan system. These four things are:
It is phonetic.
It is syllabic.
There are main glyphs and affix glyphs.
Glyph blocks are typically read left to right, top to bottom.
After we demonstrate the Ancient Maya App, the students work through translating a bunch of phonetic glyph blocks. We briefly review the Mayan Long Count Calendar and how to easily create glyph blocks.