Breaking the Maya Code

Breaking the Maya Code
by Michael D. Coe

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Book Summary Information

Author: Michael D. Coe
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1999-10-01
ISBN: 0500281335
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Book Reviews of Breaking the Maya Code

Book Review: Lively, even viscious
Summary: 4 Stars

A good story needs a villain. The villain of the book in question is Sir Eric Thompson, who must have been a fascinating figure (in fact I've been looking for some biography of him after reading the present work). Skip the first chapter, which concerns writing systems in general, and you get a hilarious work (perhaps the author had James Watson's "Double Helix" in mind when writing), abounding with anecdotes and gossips of the nasty academic world. Thompson is the arch-villain, but the author's censure on the "field anthropologists" is also severe.

The first chapter seems to mar the whole work, which is a bit too long, and is not very accurate. For example, the Chinese writing system doesn't have "214 determinatives" as the author claims (p. 32) -- there're 214 "section headers" in a traditional Chinese dictionary, which were devised by lexicographers, and are not supposed to tell "one the general class of phenomena to which the thing named belongs" (p. 31), although the two concepts have overlapping. Of course these're only minor mistakes, and to them we should not pay too much attention, as the author warns us, unwittingly: "It will be recalled that Thompson dealt posthumously with Whorf by paying no attention whatsoever to Whorf's larger points, and devoting much ink to the latter's minor mistakes (and mistakes they were), like a terrier worrying a rat." (p. 152). All the same, one star has been deducted!

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Summary of Breaking the Maya Code

Michael Coe's classic inside story of one of the major intellectual breakthroughs of our time--the last great decoding of an ancient script--has been updated throughout and now includes an epilogue that brings the reader up to date in the fast-changing field of Maya decipherment. Among the more exciting advances to be described are:
* the discovery of the specific Maya language and sophisticated grammar used by the ancient scribes on stone monuments and painted vases;
* archaeological explorations of tombs and buildings of the ancient founders of the great city of Copan, whose very existence had been predicted by epigraphers through glyphic decipherment;
* the realization that many small city-states were dominated by two rival giants, Tikal and Calakmul, through a potent combination of military conquest, diplomacy, and royal marriages.

General Books

History > Americas > Central America
Mexico
Ancient > Mayan
Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > General
Special Groups > Native American Studies
Archaeology > General
Reference > Words & Language > Linguistics

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