Cracking the Maya Code True or False?
______ 1. Diego de Landa thought the writings of the Maya were tools of the Devil.
______ 2. Only 2 Maya books, or parts of books, have survived.
______ 3. Today in Guatemala Maya villagers still make offerings to ancient gods.
______ 4. Maya civilization only really thrived for 200 years.
______ 5. José Calderón discovered the jungle city of Tikal.
______ 6. Explorers were easily able to draw the Mayan glyphs very accurately.
______ 7. Maudslay photographed Mayan hieroglyphics in exquisite detail.
______ 8. Rafinesque discovered that in Mayan, a dot stands for the number one and a
bar stands for five.
______ 9. Forstemann discovered that the Maya had developed a calendar, but he never
guessed at their achievements in astronomy.
_____ 10. J. Eric Thompson thought that, other than dates and astronomy, there wasn’t
any system at all in Mayan glyphs.
_____ 11. Tatiana Proskouriakoff brought Mayan ruins to life with her reconstruction
drawings.
_____ 12. In front of a temple, the Maya would set up stelae (stone slabs) every 10 years.
_____ 13. Proskouriakoff hypothesized that the stelae presented the life story of Mayan
rulers.
_____ 14. Eric Thompson never admitted that there was any kind of history in Mayan
inscriptions.
_____ 15. It’s a legend—not true—that Knorosov found a reproduction of the Mayan
codices in the ruins of Berlin after the war.
_____ 16. Knorosov was so interested in the Maya that he got a degree in the History of
Mexico.
_____ 17. Knorosov realized that Mayan writing combined word signs and phonetic
signs.

_____ 18. Knorosov proved that at least some Mayan symbols corresponded to the
sounds of spoken Mayan.
_____ 19. In the West, Knorosov’s insights were immediately recognized and praised.
_____ 20. Schele and Mathews figured out that the Temple of the Inscriptions was filled
with references to a Maya ruler they called “Lord Shield.”
_____ 21. The body found in the Temple of Inscriptions has never been identified.
_____ 22. “Pakal” is a Mayan word that means “shield.”
_____ 23. David Stuart didn’t study the Mayan glyphs until his fifties.
_____ 24. Stuart worked with Linda Schele at Palenque.
_____ 25. Stuart discovered that 5 signs all stood for the syllable “u.”
_____ 26. In Maya, “iut” means “as the gods will.”
_____ 27. Mayan writing is complicated by one sound having 13, 14, even 15 different
written versions.
_____ 28. Mayan signs could not be joined or overlapped.
_____ 29. When ancient Mayan texts are read aloud in the Mayan language, it may be the
first time they’ve been said aloud in a thousand years.
_____ 30. Glyphs of fantastic animals and spooky-looking skeletons are talking about
the “inner soul” of the Maya.
_____ 31. As a ritual of self-sacrifice, the Maya drew a rope with thorns through an
incision in the tongue.
_____ 32. Reading the hieroglyphs confirms that the Maya were a peace-loving people
who rarely fought wars.
_____ 33. The Mayan people of today are rediscovering the hieroglyphs and their own
history.