Time Line of Decipherment
1880
Math and astronomy
As with many early glyph-related discoveries, serendipity may have
played a role in the next major step in decipherment. A librarian
with a penchant for mathematics named Ernst Förstemann just
happened to work at the Royal Library in Dresden, Germany, which
owned the Dresden Codex and after which it was named. He also had
access to Landa's "Relation." Using his unique skill set,
Förstemann decoded the astronomy tables the Maya used to
determine when, for example, to wage war (above are codex pages
depicting the planetary cycle of Venus). He also deciphered the Maya
system for measuring time, now called the Calendar Round. In this
system, dates cycle once every 52 years, much like dates cycle
annually in our Gregorian calendar. Later Mayanists used
Förstemann's discoveries to convert Maya dates to Gregorian
dates—for instance, the Maya believed the world was created on
August 13, 3114 B.C.