1.
Logogram
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In written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or phrase. Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are logograms, some Egyptian hieroglyphs, the use of logograms in writing is called logography. A writing system that is based on logograms is called a logographic system, in alphabets and syllabaries, individual written characters represent sounds rather than concepts. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not necessarily have meaning by themselves, Writing language in this way is called phonemic orthography. Logographic systems include the earliest writing systems, the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, a more recent attempt is Zlango, intended for use in text messaging, currently including around 300 icons. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the domain is the syllable. For example, Egyptian was used to write both sȝ duck and sȝ son, though it is likely that these words were not pronounced the same apart from their consonants and this can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes, some morphemes are composed of more than one character, for example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was created by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū with the bug determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū can be used separately, in Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse, a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme hjwang meaning king, in modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār flower. These logograms, called hozwārishn, were dispensed with altogether after the Arab conquest of Persia, logograms are used in modern shorthand to represent common words. In addition, the numerals and mathematical symbols used in systems are logograms—1 one,2 two, + plus, = equals, and so on. In English, the ampersand & is used for and and et, % for percent, # for number, § for section, $ for dollar, € for euro, £ for pound, ° for degree, @ for at, etc. All historical logographic systems include a dimension, as it is impractical to have a separate basic character for every word or morpheme in a language. In some cases, such as cuneiform as it was used for Akkadian, many logographic systems also have a semantic/ideographic component, called determinatives in the case of Egyptian and radicals in the case of Chinese. In the case of Chinese, the vast majority of characters are a combination of a radical that indicates its nominal category. The Mayan system used logograms with phonetic complements like the Egyptian, Chinese scholars have traditionally classified the Chinese characters hanzi into six types by etymology. The first two types are single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other characters, single-body pictograms and ideograms make up only a small proportion of Chinese logograms
2.
Syllabary
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A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or moras which make up words. This loosely corresponds to shallow orthographies in alphabetic writing systems, most syllabaries only feature one or two kinds of syllabograms and form other syllables by graphemic rules. Otherwise they are synthetic, if they vary by onset, rime, nucleus or coda, or systematic, some scholars, e. g. Daniels, reserve the general term for analytic syllabaries and invent other terms as necessary. Some system provides katakana language conversion, in addition, the undecoded Cretan Linear A is also believed by some to be a syllabic script, though this is not proven. Chinese characters, the script used for Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages. They are therefore referred to as logosyllabic. The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana, which were developed around 700. They are mainly used to some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words. Because Japanese uses mainly CV syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language, as in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana, あった and かいた. It is therefore called a moraic writing system. Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simple phonotactics, with a predominance of monomoraic syllables, few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic, and those that once did have simplified over time to eliminate that complexity. For example, the Vai syllabary originally had separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda, the modern script has been expanded to cover all moras, but at the same time reduced to exclude all other syllables. g. Ko-no-so for Κνωσός Knōsos, pe-ma for σπέρμα sperma, the Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for coda consonants, but also has a segmental grapheme for /s/, which can be used both as a coda and in an initial /sC/ consonant cluster. The languages of South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages, have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary, in the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or close to regular. For example, the characters for ke, ka, and ko in Japanese hiragana have no similarity to indicate their common k sound, compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are all similar graphically. For example, in Devanagari, an abugida, the characters for ke, ka and ko are के, का and को respectively. English, along many other Indo-European languages like German and Russian, allows for complex syllable structures
3.
Glyph
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In typography, a glyph /ˈɡlɪf/ is an elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, intended to represent a readable character for the purposes of writing. In Turkish, however, it is not a glyph because that language has two versions of the letter i, with and without a dot. In Japanese syllabaries, a number of the characters are made up of more than one separate mark, however, in some cases, additional marks fulfill the role of diacritics, to differentiate distinct characters. In general, a diacritic is a glyph, even if it is contiguous with the rest of the character, two or more glyphs which have the same significance, whether used interchangeably or chosen depending on context, are called allographs of each other. The term has been used in English since 1727, borrowed from glyphe, from the Greek γλυφή, glyphē, carving, and the verb γλύφειν, glýphein, to hollow out, engrave, carve. The word glyph first came to widespread European attention with the engravings, in archaeology, a glyph is a carved or inscribed symbol. It may be a pictogram or ideogram, or part of a system such as a syllable. In 1897 Dana Evans discovered glyphs written on rocks in the Colorado Desert and these ancient characters have been called the most enlightening discovery in Native American History in the 19th Century. In typography, a glyph has a different definition, it is the specific shape, design. The same is true in computing, in computing as well as typography, the term character refers to a grapheme or grapheme-like unit of text, as found in natural language writing systems. The range of glyphs required increases correspondingly, in summary, in typography and computing, a glyph is a graphical unit. In graphonomics, the glyph is used for a noncharacter. Most typographic glyphs originate from the characters of a typeface, in the mobile text input technologies, Glyph is a family of text input methods based on the decomposition of letters into basic shapes. In role-playing games, the glyph is sometimes used alongside the word rune in describing magical drawings or etchings. Runes often refer to placing the image on an object or person to empower it, whereas the magic in a glyph lies dormant and is only triggered when the glyph is read or approached
4.
La Mojarra Stela 1
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La Mojarra Stela 1 is a Mesoamerican carved monument dating from the 2nd century CE. It was discovered in 1986, pulled from the Acula River near La Mojarra, Veracruz, Mexico, the 4 1⁄2-foot-wide by 6 1⁄2-foot-high, four-ton limestone slab contains about 535 glyphs of the Isthmian script. The right side of the features a full-length portrait of a man in an elaborate headdress and costume. Above the figure,12 short columns of glyphs have been etched into the stone, among these glyphs are two Mesoamerican Long Count calendar dates which correspond to May 143 CE and July 156 CE. The monument is an example of the type of stela which later became common commemorating rulers of Maya sites in the Classic era. The figure engraved onto Stela 1 is complex and not easily interpreted, pool describes the figure as follows, Prof. Philip Arnold has tentatively identified the stylized sharks as the Olmec Fish/Shark Monster, a symbol of rulership. According to Mary Ellen Miller, the figure wears the headdress of the Principal Bird Deity, Bird deities were often featured on stelae of this period, and can be seen on Izapa Stela 4 as well on monuments at Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Zaculeu. The Tuxtla Statuette, a small 6-inch-high greenstone sculpture, also portrays a human dressed as a bird and it comes from the same culture and period as Stela 1, and both feature Isthmian script glyphs. These two artifacts were found roughly 70 km apart and their Long Count dates are separated by only 6 years and they may even refer to the same person. For some years after discovery, the monument was in storage in the Museo de Antropología in Xalapa, in November 1995, as the monument was being prepared for display, a previously neglected series of glyphs was noticed on one side in eroded but still partially recognizable condition. In 1993, and again in 1997, after discovery of the new column of glyphs, John Justeson and this decipherment has been disputed by Michael D. Coe and Stephen D. Houston, among others. Resolution of this debate will likely need to further archaeological discoveries. Detail showing one of the two Long Count dates, the Shark-Monster in Olmec Iconography, in Mesoamerican Voices,2005, v.2. Diehl, Richard Mojarra, La, in Evans, Susan, ed. Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America, Taylor & Francis, London. Guernsey, Julia Ritual and Power in Stone, The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, a Newly Discovered Column in the Hieroglyphic Text on La Mojarra Stela 1, a Test of the Epi-Olmec Decipherment. Justeson, John S. and Terrence Kaufman Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing, Kaufman, Terrence Early Mesoamerican Writing Systems on University of Pittsburgh Department of Anthropology website. Koontz, Rex, Annabeth Headrick, Kathryn Reese-Taylor Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, pool, Christopher Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-78882-3. Schuster, Angela M. H. Epi-Olmec Decipherment in Archaeology, online
5.
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar
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The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal and base-18 calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is known as the Maya Long Count calendar. The Long Count calendar was used on monuments. The two most widely used calendars in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, were the 260-day Tzolkin and the 365 day Haab, the equivalent Aztec calendars are known in Nahuatl as the tonalpohualli and Xiuhpohualli. The combination of a Haab and a Tzolkin date identifies a day in a combination which does not occur again for 18,980 days, to identify days over periods longer than this, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar. There has been debate over the precise correlation between the Western calendars and the Long Count calendars. The August 11 date is based on the GMT correlation, the completion of 13 baktuns marks the Creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya. On this day, Raised-up-Sky-Lord caused three stones to be set by associated gods at Lying-Down-Sky, First-Three-Stone-Place, because the sky still lay on the primordial sea, it was black. The setting of the three stones centered the cosmos which allowed the sky to be raised, revealing the sun, rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. In a pure base-20 scheme,0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, the Long Count is not pure base-20, however, since the second digit from the right rolls over to zero when it reaches 18. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, note that the name baktun was invented by modern scholars. The numbered Long Count was no longer in use by the time the Spanish arrived in the Yucatán Peninsula, instead the Maya were using an abbreviated Short Count. Long Count dates are written with Mesoamerican numerals, as shown on this table, a dot represents 1 while a bar equals 5. The shell glyph was used to represent the zero concept, the Long Count calendar required the use of zero as a place-holder, and presents one of the earliest uses of the zero concept in history. On Maya monuments, the Long Count syntax is more complex, the date sequence is given once, at the beginning of the inscription, and opens with the so-called ISIG which reads tzik-a hab’. Next come the 5 digits of the Long Count, followed by the Calendar Round, the supplementary series is optional and contains lunar data, for example, the age of the moon on the day and the calculated length of current lunation. The text then continues with whatever activity occurred on that date, a drawing of a full Maya Long Count inscription is shown below. Interpretations of inscriptions on some artifacts differ, la Mojarra Stela 1, the Tuxtla Statuette, Tres Zapotes Stela C, and Chiapa Stela 2 are all inscribed in an Epi-Olmec, not Maya, style
6.
Mesoamerican writing systems
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Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China, is among the five known places in the world where writing has developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic values and they are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script, an extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved partly in indigenous scripts and partly in the postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script. Early Olmec ceramics show representations of something that may be codices, suggesting that amatl bark codices and it was also long thought that many of the glyphs present on Olmec monumental sculpture, such as those on the so-called Ambassador Monument, represented an early Olmec script. This suspicion was reinforced in 2002 by the announcement of the discovery of similar glyphs at San Andres and this block was discovered by locals in the Olmec heartland and was dated by the archaeologists to approximately 900 BCE based on other debris. If the authenticity and date can be verified, this will prove to be the earliest writing yet found in Mesoamerica, another candidate for earliest writing system in Mesoamerica is the writing system of the Zapotec culture. Rising in the late Pre-Classic era after the decline of the Olmec civilization, on a few monuments at this archaeological site, archaeologists have found extended text in a glyphic script. Some signs can be recognized as calendric information but the script as such remains undeciphered, the earliest known monument with Zapotec writing is a Danzante stone, officially known as Monument 3, found in San Jose Mogote, Oaxaca. It has a relief of what appears to be a dead, first dated to 500–600 BCE, this was earlier considered the earliest writing in Mesoamerica. However doubts have been expressed as to dating and the monument may have been reused. The Zapotec script went out of use only in the late Classic period, a small number of artifacts found in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec show examples of another early Mesoamerican writing system. They can be seen to contain calendric information but are otherwise undeciphered, the longest of these texts are on La Mojarra Stela 1 and the Tuxtla Statuette. The writing system used is very close to the Mayan script, using affixal glyphs and Long Count dates and it has been suggested that this Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script is the direct predecessor of the Mayan script, thus giving the Mayan script a non-Mayan origin. Another artifact with Epi-Olmec script is the Chiapa de Corzo stela which is the oldest monument of the Americas inscribed with its own date, in a 1997 paper, John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman put forward a decipherment of Epi-Olmec. In the highland Mayan archaeological sites of Abaj Takalik and Kaminaljuyú writing has been dating to Izapan culture. It is likely that in this area in late Pre-Classic times an ancient form of a Mixe–Zoquean language was spoken, some glyphs in this scripts are readable as they are identical to Mayan glyphs but the script remains undeciphered. The advanced decay and destruction of archaeological sites make it improbable that more monuments with these scripts will come to light making possible a decipherment. The earliest inscriptions in an identifiably Maya script date back to 200–300 BCE, early examples include the painted inscriptions at the caves of Naj Tunich and La Cobanerita in El Petén, Guatemala
7.
Isthmus of Tehuantepec
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The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is an isthmus in Mexico. It represents the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, it was a major shipping route known simply as the Tehuantepec Route. The name is taken from the town of Santo Domingo Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca, the isthmus includes the part of Mexico lying between the 94th and 96th meridians west longitude, or the southeastern parts of Veracruz and Oaxaca, including small areas of Chiapas and Tabasco. The states of Tabasco and Chiapas are east of the isthmus, with Veracruz, at its narrowest point, the isthmus is 200 km across from gulf to gulf, or 192 km to the head of Laguna Superior on the Pacific coast. The Sierra Madre breaks down at this point into a broad, plateau-like ridge, whose elevation, the northern side of the isthmus is swampy and densely covered with jungle, which has been a greater obstacle to railway construction than the grades in crossing the sierra. The whole region is hot and malarial, except for the open elevations, the annual rainfall on the Atlantic or northern slope is 3,960 mm and the maximum temperature about 35 degrees Celsius in the shade. The Pacific slope has a light rainfall and dryer climate, the narrowness of the isthmus, and the gap in the Sierra Madre, allow the trade winds from the Gulf of Mexico to blow through to the Pacific. This wind is known as the Tehuano, the region has one of the best wind resources in Mexico, with several wind farms. The population is composed almost wholly of indigenous Zapotec peoples, the women are the traders in Tehuantepec and do little menial work. The cuisine of the region is based upon traditional foods and ingredients, dishes may range from simple to elaborate, most dishes incorporate maize and moles. Common items include tamales made with iguana, chicken, beef or armadillo, guetabingui, Garnachas topped with dried queso Oaxaca, and pozol, a maize-based soup. Since the days of Hernán Cortés, the Tehuantepec isthmus has been considered a favorable route, first for an interoceanic canal and its proximity to the axis of international trade gives it some advantage over the Panama route. The Isthmus of Panama, however, is narrower, making for a shorter traversal. The 1853 Gadsden Purchase treaty included a provision allowing the U. S. to transport mail and trade goods across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec via a plank road and railroad. The 1859 McLane-Ocampo Treaty, which Benito Juárez signed but was never ratified by the United States Congress, when the great cost of a canal across the isthmus compelled engineers and capitalists to give it up as impracticable, James B. Eads proposed to construct a quadruple track ship-railway, and the scheme received serious attention for some time, then came projects for an ordinary railway, and several concessions were granted by the Mexican government for this purpose from 1857 to 1882. In the latter year the Mexican government resolved to undertake the construction on its own account. In 1888 this contract was rescinded, after 108 km of road had been completed, the next contract was fruitless because of the death of the contractor, and the third failed to complete the work within the sum specified
8.
Common Era
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Common Era or Current Era is a year-numbering system for the Julian and Gregorian calendars that refers to the years since the start of this era, i. e. since AD1. The preceding era is referred to as before the Common or Current Era, the Current Era notation system can be used as a secular alternative to the Dionysian era system, which distinguishes eras as AD and BC. The two notation systems are equivalent, thus 2017 CE corresponds to AD2017 and 400 BCE corresponds to 400 BC. The year-numbering system for the Gregorian calendar is the most widespread civil calendar used in the world today. For decades, it has been the standard, recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations. The expression has been traced back to Latin usage to 1615, as vulgaris aerae, the term Common Era can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish academics. He attempted to number years from a reference date, an event he referred to as the Incarnation of Jesus. Dionysius labeled the column of the table in which he introduced the new era as Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, numbering years in this manner became more widespread in Europe with its usage by Bede in England in 731. Bede also introduced the practice of dating years before what he supposed was the year of birth of Jesus, in 1422, Portugal became the last Western European country to switch to the system begun by Dionysius. The first use of the Latin term vulgaris aerae discovered so far was in a 1615 book by Johannes Kepler, Kepler uses it again in a 1616 table of ephemerides, and again in 1617. A1635 English edition of that book has the title page in English – so far, a 1701 book edited by John LeClerc includes Before Christ according to the Vulgar Æra,6. A1716 book in English by Dean Humphrey Prideaux says, before the beginning of the vulgar æra, a 1796 book uses the term vulgar era of the nativity. The first so-far-discovered usage of Christian Era is as the Latin phrase aerae christianae on the page of a 1584 theology book. In 1649, the Latin phrase æræ Christianæ appeared in the title of an English almanac, a 1652 ephemeris is the first instance so-far-found for English usage of Christian Era. The English phrase common Era appears at least as early as 1708, a 1759 history book uses common æra in a generic sense, to refer to the common era of the Jews. The first-so-far found usage of the phrase before the era is in a 1770 work that also uses common era and vulgar era as synonyms. The 1797 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the terms vulgar era, the Catholic Encyclopedia in at least one article reports all three terms being commonly understood by the early 20th century. Thus, the era of the Jews, the common era of the Mahometans, common era of the world
9.
Maya script
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The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo, Guatemala. Maya writing was in use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries. Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs, modern Mayan languages are written using the Latin alphabet rather than Maya script. It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were written by scribes, usually members of the Maya priesthood, there is also some evidence that the script may have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of the Guatemalan Highlands. However, if languages were written, they may have been written by Ch’olti’ scribes. Mayan writing consisted of an elaborate set of glyphs, which were laboriously painted on ceramics, walls or bark-paper codices, carved in wood or stone. Carved and molded glyphs were painted, but the paint has rarely survived, about 90% of Mayan writing can now be read with varying degrees of certainty, enough to give a comprehensive idea of its structure. The Mayan script was a logosyllabic system, individual glyphs could represent either a word or a syllable, indeed, the same glyph could often be used for both. For example, the calendaric glyph MANIK’ was also used to represent the syllable chi, there was polyvalence in the other direction as well, different glyphs could be read the same way. For example, half a dozen apparently unrelated glyphs were used to write the common third person pronoun u-. However, in the case of Mayan, each tended to correspond to a noun or verb phrase such as his green headband. Also, glyphs were sometimes conflated, where an element of one glyph would replace part of a second, conflation occurs in other scripts, For example, in medieval Spanish manuscripts the word de of was sometimes written Ð. Another example is the ampersand which is a conflation of the Latin et, in place of the standard block configuration, Mayan was also sometimes written in a single row or column, L, or T shapes. These variations most often appeared when they would fit the surface being inscribed. For example, the logogram for fish fin, came to represent the syllable ka, for example, balam jaguar could be written as a single logogram, BALAM, complemented phonetically as ba-BALAM, or BALAM-ma, or ba-BALAM-ma, or written completely phonetically as ba-la-ma. Phonetic glyphs stood for simple consonant-vowel or bare-vowel syllables, when these final consonants were sonorants or gutturals they were sometimes ignored, but more often final consonants were written, which meant that an extra vowel was written as well. This was typically an echo vowel that repeated the vowel of the previous syllable and that is, the word fish fin would be underspelled ka or written in full as ka-ha. A more complex spelling is ha-o-bo ko-ko-no-ma for they are the guardians, a minimal set is, ba-ka ba-ki ba-ku = ba-ke ba-ke-le Despite depending on consonants which were frequently not written, the Mayan voice system was reliably indicated
