Written Native American language?

Keenir

Banned
Not so long ago you would've put Mayan glyphs in the same category.

ah, but Mayan glyph-reading didn't survive European contact...thus making it ineligable for what he suggested:

forcing them into new communities across different peoples.
Thus much of their culture was lost, often before first direct
contact with Europeans.

The art of writing could have served its main purpose here:
To conserve cultural items.


He didn't say it would have served,
he said it could have served.
Implicit in the usage of "could" is the
"with luck"...:D

ah. those words always cause me trouble.
 

Keenir

Banned
Thanks, William. Moreover, I am not talking about millenia,
I'm talking about a couple of decades until direct contact between
colonists/conquerors and natives is established.
With high probability, things will go as they did from then onward.
But it's another player's turn then ...

...in which case the Mayan example is even better - look how well knowledge of that script survived.
 
ah, but Mayan glyph-reading didn't survive European contact...thus making it ineligable for what he suggested:
That's highly debatable. Chances are the Books of Chilam Balam were adapted from Maya codices (obviously in glyphs) and the 3 other codices are also obviously of cultural significance and providing great insight on Maya culture.
 

Keenir

Banned
That's highly debatable. Chances are the Books of Chilam Balam were adapted from Maya codices (obviously in glyphs) and the 3 other codices are also obviously of cultural significance and providing great insight on Maya culture.

...which, for over two centuries, nobody could read.

When most people say "cultural survival", they mean the culture survives and continues living. (like the Welsh)


Thanks to Napoleon's men, we can read Ancient Egyptian - but can we say that Ancient Egyptian culture survived?
(only if we want to say that Jesus=Horus)
 
Maya culture did survive, however, and continues to do so.

In parts of the Yucatan and Guatemala, people continue to speak various Mayan dialects, eat food with Mayan recipes, work farms the same way as their ancestors, and continue to worship their old gods in addition to the Christian god. If that is not cultural survival, I don't know what is.
 

Keenir

Banned
Maya culture did survive, however, and continues to do so.

and it did so without the written language. therefore the earlier argument does not apply.


In parts of the Yucatan and Guatemala, people continue to speak various Mayan dialects, eat food with Mayan recipes, work farms the same way as their ancestors, and continue to worship their old gods in addition to the Christian god. If that is not cultural survival, I don't know what is.

talk to a Copt - you just described the same level of continuity they have with Pharonic times.:p
 
Ah, but do Coptics follow the Pharonic pantheon in any form? Nevertheless, it is irrelevant. And while the Maya glyph writing was lost for a few centuries due to an overzealous priest, they had time to copy some stuff and said overzealous priest even helped preserve some knowledge of the writing as penance. His syllabary, though incorrect, was the basis for the work that cracked the secrets to the glyphs. But anyways, the writing system itself was not as important as the tradition of literacy that did survive Conquest.
 

Keenir

Banned
Ah, but do Coptics follow the Pharonic pantheon in any form?

they use the same writing system - one major detail, just like you say the modern Maya pray to Chac and the others. in essentially all other details, though, both groups are just like their neighbors.

Nevertheless, it is irrelevant. And while the Maya glyph writing was lost for a few centuries due to an overzealous priest, they had time to copy some stuff and said overzealous priest even helped preserve some knowledge of the writing as penance. His syllabary, though incorrect, was the basis for the work that cracked the secrets to the glyphs.

source, please.

and the glyphs were cracked because of the wall paintings and the four surviving Codexes - I've never heard anything about a priest preserving knowledge of the writing (it's one thing to copy pictures - its another to tell what they mean))

and given that not even Dr. Coe has said anything about that supposed priest, I'm doubtful the priest did what you said.

But anyways, the writing system itself was not as important as the tradition of literacy that did survive Conquest.

you'd have to refresh my memory - exactly how did Mayans writing in Spanish help the Soviets crack the Mayan writing system?
 
they use the same writing system - one major detail, just like you say the modern Maya pray to Chac and the others. in essentially all other details, though, both groups are just like their neighbors.



source, please.

and the glyphs were cracked because of the wall paintings and the four surviving Codexes - I've never heard anything about a priest preserving knowledge of the writing (it's one thing to copy pictures - its another to tell what they mean))

and given that not even Dr. Coe has said anything about that supposed priest, I'm doubtful the priest did what you said.



you'd have to refresh my memory - exactly how did Mayans writing in Spanish help the Soviets crack the Mayan writing system?

The "priest" is Bishop Landa. He was responsible for the almost complete destruction of Maya books, but paradoxically did put together a so-called "Maya alphabet" by interviewing literate Mayas and trying to make correlations between sounds in the Yucatec language and glyphs. He did not understand the combined syllabic/logographic nature of the script and believed he was writing down an phonetic alphabet. He got a lot wrong. But he was far more correct than Anglo-American Mayanists - who believed the glyphs were ideograms almost exclusively and got in entirely wrong the following 4 centuries. The Soviet scholar Knorosov made extensive use of Landa's "alphabet" in his pioneering work in decipherment. Coe does mention Landa's alphabet as a valuable source that was misunderstood and then ignored for centuries.

There is no way of knowing that the Maya script would have been "cracked" if Landa did not put together his alphabet, but it sure helped - as Knorosov himself notes.
 

Keenir

Banned
The "priest" is Bishop Landa. He was responsible for the almost complete destruction of Maya books, but paradoxically did put together a so-called "Maya alphabet" by interviewing literate Mayas and trying to make correlations between sounds in the Yucatec language and glyphs. He did not understand the combined syllabic/logographic nature of the script and believed he was writing down an phonetic alphabet. He got a lot wrong. But he was far more correct than Anglo-American Mayanists - who believed the glyphs were ideograms almost exclusively and got in entirely wrong the following 4 centuries. The Soviet scholar Knorosov made extensive use of Landa's "alphabet" in his pioneering work in decipherment. Coe does mention Landa's alphabet as a valuable source that was misunderstood and then ignored for centuries.

There is no way of knowing that the Maya script would have been "cracked" if Landa did not put together his alphabet, but it sure helped - as Knorosov himself notes.

oh; Landa.

apologies, then. I heard "a Priest who preserved knowledge of Mayan writing" and I think my brain went pear-shaped (or saw red, not sure)

thank you for the clarification.
 
I'v learned two things I entirely ignored by reading this thread:

1) The Eastern Island natives had a writting system, which hasn't yet been dechiphered.:eek:

2) The Mayan script was dechiphered by the ideas of a Soviet linguist, inspired by the book of a spanish priest.:cool:

Thanks for reminding me the OTL history is sometimes as cool as Alternate history:)
 
I'v learned two things I entirely ignored by reading this thread:

1) The Eastern Island natives had a writting system, which hasn't yet been dechiphered.:eek:

2) The Mayan script was dechiphered by the ideas of a Soviet linguist, inspired by the book of a spanish priest.:cool:

Thanks for reminding me the OTL history is sometimes as cool as Alternate history:)
Rongorongo might be a script, its not clear. Just being pedantic, although I do think that it probably was, mostly because it looks like what Cthulhu cultists would write with. :p
 
Just a fad which took me quite a moment to figure out:

Is it correct that all "Eastern Islands" in the sense of thread so far
are actually "Easter Islands"?

;)
 
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