Time Line of Decipherment
1930s
Giant steps—and missteps
By the 1930s, British researcher Eric Thompson was the world's
foremost expert in glyph studies. His achievements included
deciphering signs related to the calendar and astronomy as well as
identifying new words from the Maya lexicon. Thompson also developed
a numerical cataloguing technique, the "T"-numbering system, for
each glyph (above). This enabled experts to easily discuss symbols
that had yet to be fully understood or identified. Nevertheless,
glyph studies nearly came to a halt during this time, in large part
because Thompson had most scholars convinced that each of the
symbols in glyphs stood for entire words or ideas. For instance, the
glyph for "west" included a well-known symbol for the sun and an
as-yet unidentified symbol depicting a nearly closed hand. Thompson
suggested that the hand meant "completion." And so "west," where the
sun sets, was symbolized by "completion of the sun." It was a
reasonable guess, but one that, along with Thompson's more general
take on the glyphs, would be proven wrong.