Mayan Documents for Downloading

Documents accessed from this page are copyright © 2007, 2008 by Lloyd B. Anderson. All Rights Reserved with the following exception: individuals may make a single copy for their own use only, direct from these web pages, each page entire and together with this cover page, and material will be properly cited as is normally appropriate.

Sections available at this time:
1. Free fonts for Mayan day and month glyphs and numbers. Click here.
2. An essay on changes in Mayan studies "End of an Era -- Beginning of a New Era" Click here.
      Discussions in response to that essay (1 so far) -- Click here.
3. Translation Problems and the Popol Vuh -- Click here.
4. Spelling Patterns in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing: CVC vs. CVVC vs. CV'C -- Click here.
5. Concordance to Mayan Vases, from Kerr vase numbers to published locations of illustrations
     with Topical listings of Mayan vases -- Click here.
6. Calakmul, Its Influence and Relations -- Click here. Analyses of the "Dynasty Pots" -- Click here.
7. Seibal history and stela seriation -- Click here.
8. Maya Math & World Ages: 2012, 13 vs. 20 Baktuns, and Zero -- Click here.
9. The 819-day count and the "Y" glyph -- Click here.
10. The larger context:
      How the greatest climatic perturbances may have helped to crash civilizations -- Click here.
      Bar chart showing date ranges and dates of last Maya inscriptions at various sites -- Click here.
      Thanks to Bill Puppa, Steve Daniel, Helen Alexander, and Cindy Hesel for discussions improving an earlier draft
11. Alta Verapaz and resources for the 2009 Mayan Weekend, Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum, 3-5 April -- Click here.
12. The First Chronicle of the Chilam Balams (work developed from the base of Edmonson 1985)
         These may indeed be valid histories back as early as 672 CE. Edmonson's skepticism may have been unwarranted.
         These texts like inscriptions on stone, having distance numbers, Tzolk'in dates, and anterior event indicators.
         For the full texts laid out in parallel, please click here and for new translations of the Maní and Chumayel intros, here.
         It is a goal to soon add tentative new translations of these specific parts of the Chilam Balams.
         There is one passage where one of Chumayel, Mani, and Tizimin differs from the other two,
         But the one which differs recounts the events one k'atun later and marks its verb with the Yucatecan
         anterior marker <-ci>. So the accounts do coincide. There appears to be very high reliability.
         So we may reason that historical records were maintained from the Classic through to contact with
         Spanish and beyond. For the very earliest statement, if we can figure out what they are saying
         (in the "fourth" what?), we may even learn the date of a departure from the coast of central Mexico.
         See also Erik Boot 2005 Continuity and Change in Text and Image at Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, México.

Translation Problems and the Popol Vuh
Issues in Translation generally -- a quick introduction which also has links to the next items.
     Translation Problems for Traditional High Cultures -- Please click here.

Structured analysis and translation of the Popol Vuh lines 1-1720 (through the defeat of 7 Macaw),
           conveniently usable thanks to the generosity of Allen Christenson providing the electronic files,
           on which this version was based but is also in many places substantially new..
     Translating the Popol Vuh -- Please click here. Please read also the item just above on translation science.
     Popol Vuh cover page (an older much shorter version of the preceding) -- Please click here.
     The Popol Vuh in Quiché -- Please click here.
     The Popol Vuh in English -- Please click here.

Spelling Patterns in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing: CVC, CVVC, CV'C
Spelling patterns in Mayan hieroglyphic writing: CVC vs. CVVC vs. CV'C Please click here.
     An account of the history of investigations, of several different hypotheses each of which explains some of the data
     but leaves some part of it unexplained. (Any single explanation alone is probably to be rejected.)
     Along with a table of the most generally accepted examples of relevant synharmonic and disharmonic spellings.
     Please click here.

Concordance to Mayan Vases, from Kerr Numbers to Illustrations
Concordance to Mayan Vases, from Kerr Numbers to pages in his Mayan Vase Books ( 6 volumes,
    1989 through 2000) and to illustration and page numbers in several important publications. Please click here.
    With thanks to Justin Kerr for encouragement. To view vases see www.FAMSI.org under "Kerr photographs"
          Also available at FAMSI are concordances in the other direction from other publications to Kerr numbers.
    Thanks to Dorie Budet for an updating 25 April 2008 of the MS numbers from the "Mayan Survey" project
           by Ron Bishop and herself. Used with permission.

Topical Listings of Mayan Vases
Topical lists of Mayan Vases which show related scenes or clusters of motifs. Please click here.
     This is an alternative to searching the Kerr Vase Database (see above) for single motifs.
A recent database for polychrome ceramics with the dancing Maize God is summarized by Matt Looper in Glyph Dwellers Report no.25, April 2008.
See http://nas.ucdavis.edu/NALC/R24.pdf or http://nas.ucdavis.edu/NALC/glyphdwellers.html.


Analyses of the "Dynasty Pots" Please click here.
Eleven vases in "codex style" appear to list accession dates of a series of up to 19 rulers from the "Serpent" polity. A few of the names resemble known rulers of that polity, but none of the accession dates are the same. The possibility has been raised that these are transcriptions onto vases of an older dynastic list, perhaps from the early classic. The records all start from the beginning of the list but end at different points, sometimes in mid-sentence. Simon Martin's essay for volume 5 of Kerr's Maya Vase Books, suggested identification of five scribes, each responsible for from one to four of the pots. Analyses here extend his work, grouping the vases into two large families somewhat like manuscript traditions. Included are detailed studies of differences at each point, suggesting which variants are probably closer to the original text and which variants are most likely to have resulted from errors.


Seibal HistoryAnalyses of the "Dynasty Pots" -- Click here.
PDF files of transcriptions of glyphic texts and a tentative seriation of stelas on the basis of iconography and dates.
Please click here.
While these are a personal contribution, they have been stimulated by and have benefited enormously from study by the glyph groups of the Pre-Columbian Societies of Philadelphia (led by John Harris) and Washington, DC.