Cracking the Maya Code (2008)

Documentary. Nova has done an excellent job in summarizing the scholarly effort of the last 120 years to decipher and interpret Mayan hieroglyphs -- taking us from the early view of the Mayans as mystic astronomers to a more scientific view of them as historical archivists to the current view of Mayans (finally based on an intimate understanding of their writing system and, for the first time in 1,000 years, the ability to read their language out loud) as fierce warlords. While instituting perhaps the bloodiest of tribal hegemonies in human history is not a flattering legacy, nothing can change the Mayans' unparalleled contributions to literature and architecture in pre-Colombian times or the Western hemisphere. The Mayan culture's early repression by Western (and, obliquely cited, Roman Catholic) imperialism has given way now to Mayan schoolchildren who are learning to speak and write in the tongue of their ancestors. Owning its history is a prerequisite for every culture, notes one Mayan expert, and so thankfully Western archeologists and epigraphers have now opened the wonders of Mayan hieroglyphics to all humanity as well as the descendants of those who built a vast Meso-American civilization while Europe was still in the Dark Ages. 5 stars.