We often relegate Mesoamerica's beautiful scripts to the past.
There were glyphs, then colonization, then... well I guess Spanish or something?
It's time to tell a different story about the present and future.
How are these scripts used today?
I recently animated a journey back in time to the oldest writing in Mesoamerica.
But every one of the language families mentioned in that video is still spoken today, some
by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
So then, a followup: what about the modern use of the glyphs?
Here's one continuity: Nāhua place names are spread throughout the region, and Nāhua glyphs
still appear on local seals and emblems.
Acapulco keeps its hands pulling reeds apart.
Mazatlán remains the "deer place".
Xochimilco puts flowers atop farmland.
Even "Guatemala" is from a Nāhuatl word meaning "place of many trees",
and you can see those trees on the capital's flag.
What must be the most famous glyphs though are found on another flag.
Incorporated into this compound of icons symbolizing the story of the founding of Mexico's capital
upon a lake, there's the glyph of a stone and a cactus, tētl and nōchtli, both
well known from old codices.
There are masterful Oaxacan artists skilled in weaving incredible patterns.
Many textiles draw on ancient motifs like the xicalcoliuhqui, which is a design
not a writing system.
Others though feature what in the last video we called Zapotec and Mixtec glyphs.
And symbols from across the region also get worked into business logos and artists' murals,
which I probably can't show here but need to mention because it's popular.
Notice so far we've seen expressions of art and identity.
These copy and repeat old texts.
Their creativity is in updating the style and the context.
But what about taking the next step: using glyphs to write new texts?
One script is already on that path: Maya.
Years ago I saw footage of a class learning the basics with the help of outside academics.
It's known in Maya studies that the script was poured over and deciphered by outsiders,
Mayanists more than Maya people themselves.
And epigraphers today do write the script as part of their studies.
I'll link a video of one who takes the time to demonstrate inking two names.
Many outside experts led the way by supporting rather than calling the shots, and today glyphs
are in the hands and pens of speakers of Mayan languages and have been spotted on media
from books to t-shirts.
Organizations have done this kind of thing for decades, so like in books I've seen page
numbers or the emblem of an institute or publisher.
Thanks to individuals, you don't have to be contented with a glyph here or there
around the edges.
The Popol Wuj, a classic text remembered and later passed down via colonial alphabet, is
now rendered entirely in glyphs by a writer identified on the cover as an ajtz'iib',
a modern scribe.
At the entrance to the archaeological site of Iximche', beside the parking lot, there's
a stela inscribed front and back.
Its eighty glyph blocks narrate events from the start of the long count thousands of years
ago, to the founding of the site, to the Spanish conquest, down to the planting of this stone
in 2012.
It's a new monument written and sculpted by experts from among the Kaqchikel people.
And there are more new texts, some as creative as poetry.
What's claimed to be the first poem in Maya glyphs has already been written in a language
from another branch of the Mayan family in 2015.
The title here, Xikitin, is entirely composed of phonetic syllable glyphs, and it reappears
here in the first glyph block, just to give you a taste of the versatility.
And to read the rest, you follow the traditional path:
zig-zag between two columns before moving
over to the next two columns.
But it might be a while before we're searching and posting on the web using these glyphs.
Mayan languages mostly get written in Latin characters, as they have been
for nearly five centuries.
There is hope and research going into figuring out how Maya glyphs could be encoded in Unicode.
The way the script works, it's a surprisingly big challenge.
I mean, this is the first script to make me add a third dimension to my reading axes.
As much as I find glyphic history fascinating (oh it is), I'm more intrigued by where the
scripts, and people who speak the languages today, will go from here.
Developing your own quick handwriting?
Inventing new glyphs?
Reawakening more of the scripts?
Since the word for write also means paint, I'll say: get painting,
and stick around and subscribe for language.