formation from

The hieroglyphic writing system of the Maya not only was the most fully developed prehis-panic writing system in the Americas, it also was in continuous use longer than any other writing system invented by prehispanic Indians. The first texts written in a hieroglyphic script that can be identified as a direct precursor to Maya hiero-glyphic writing date to the Protoclassic.1 The last texts written by a literate Maya occur in Diego de Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, com-piled shortly after the conquest of the peninsula. The Maya writing system was used one and a half thousand years; it survived both the trans