Extension Students Work with a Master Code-Breaker

Mayan Hieroglyphs Course a Popular Draw

It is five o'clock on an early October evening. Students file into a large Sever Hall classroom and begin to study small, black and white, icon-like drawings printed on homemade flash cards. Some students work together, comparing their cards and answering each other's questions. "That's definitely a head variant of the number 9," says one student, pointing to his card. "You can tell by the jaguar spots on his jaw." "Or, you can just follow the trail of blood," quips another and several students laugh, having understood the reference. An uninformed observer might wonder what is going on in this classroom, but to instructor David Stuart the answer is easy. Students in his Extension course, ANTH E-177 Deciphering Ancient Maya Hieroglyphs, are reviewing "glyphs" that they've memorized in preparation for their first quiz.

Instructor David Stuart, Deciphering Ancient Maya Heiroglyphs

What brings 40 Extension School students to a course on deciphering classic Maya hieroglyphs? Most students describe an abiding interest in the Maya based on prior travel, field work, or classroom study. Several mention Professor William Fash's course, ANTH E-175 Introduction to Mesoamerican Civilization (next offered in spring '98). Some have a linguistic interest in the subject, and one student cites his own Mayan heritage. But more than a few students credit the instructor, Dr. David Stuart, Lecturer on Anthropology and Associate Director of the Peabody Museum's Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphs Project, as their primary reason for enrolling. As one student writes, "When I saw who was teaching the course, I knew that I had to take it!" Another calls it "a rare and wonderful opportunity."

In his 1992 book, Breaking the Maya Code, Yale Professor of Anthropology Michael Coe devotes an entire chapter to David Stuart and his many contributions to the recent "mighty flood" of Maya decipherments, referring to Stuart as one of "a small handful of truly brilliant epigraphers." According to Harvard's William Fash, Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology, "David Stuart is one of the masters who is on the cutting edge of his field. He is deeply involved in the last major writing decipherment problem in human history." Fash, who is also Director of the Copán Acropolis Archaeological Project in Copán, Honduras, is referring to Stuart's current decipherment work on the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copán. Composed of some 1,300 glyphs with dates that range from 553 to 751 AD, the stairway is "the longest ancient text yet found in the New World." It is easy to understand why students who are familiar with Stuart's work "jumped at the chance to take this course," as one such student commented.

As enthusiastic as he is about his subject matter, Dr. Stuart evinces no surprise at the substantial Extension course enrollment. Instead he notes with surprise and pleasure the "very rich" classroom experience which is created by the diversity of backgrounds and experiences among his students. Modest about his own reputation, he attributes student interest to the fact that there has been a lot of popular interest in the Maya for the past ten years, similar to the way that Egypt has been popular in the past. Most elementary schools now include a unit about the Maya, he said, adding that he occasionally makes presentations at schools in the area. Stuart also believes that Americans find it exciting to have the Mayan civilization "right next door."

Dr. Stuart spends the last half-hour of class coaching students through a decipherment of two narrative hieroglyphic inscriptions that are projected on a large screen at the front of the room. Stuart skillfully leads the class through the necessary grammatical and phonetic analyses of the glyphs to the exciting conclusion that both inscriptions, in fact, describe the same event. "I love this stuff," he exclaims, and it is clear that his students share his enthusiasm. The consensus is best described in the words of the student who said, "I thought the course would be fun--and it is!"