1981
In their own words
Before all the glyphs could be read aloud in the original Maya,
researchers needed to complete Yuri Knorosov's phonetic
decipherment. This began in 1981 when 15-year-old budding Mayanist
David Stuart (above, with Linda Schele) discovered that individual
Maya words could be written in multiple ways, using different
symbols for the same sounds, as in "faze" and "phase." Eric
Thompson's theory had been that the Maya wrote in rebus, in which
symbols are used for whole words. A modern rebus of the phrase "I
can see" might include pictures of an eye, a tin can, and the sea.
While some glyphs can indeed be read this way, Stuart's
finding—that any symbol with the correct beginning sound can
be used to identify that sound in a word glyph—is also true.
As a result, a single glyph could be drawn in dozens of ways. With
this revelation, scholars could now read many glyphs once considered
indecipherable.