The program:
-describes where the Maya region is located.
-recounts the first documented discovery by an expedition from Spain, in 1785, of tablets with hieroglyphs.
-notes that the complexity of the hieroglyphs presented the greatest obstacle to deciphering the images.
-reports that Alfred Maudslay was the first to photograph the ruins in 1881.
-relates how the Maya language faded to obscurity after, in 1562, Bishop Deigo de Landa and other Spaniards destroyed—for religious reasons—all the Maya texts he could find.
-reports on how one of the first breakthroughs in deciphering the code came in 1810, when a scholar first determined that some of the glyphs stood for numbers.
-pieces together the puzzle of how numerous scientists and laypeople unraveled the mystery behind the hieroglyphs, including what sound each glyph represented.
-reports on present-day efforts to teach the original Maya language to children in the region.
