The Mesoamerican scripts derived from Northern Mexico and
are often called hieroglyphs since their pattern is similar to that of the
Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Mesoamerican glyphs resemble real objects such as people
and animals. Human body parts were also drawn, such as arms and legs.
I personally noticed that Mesoamerican glyphs look more like paintings rather than
alphabetic scripts.
In Aztec and Mixtec scripts, names and places were written on the picture itself.
In Aztec and Mixtec scripts, names and places were written on the picture itself.
The Mesoamerican numeric system is quite basic (bar-and dot-notation).
The dot represents value ‘one’ and the bar represents value ’five’.
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| Bar-and dot-notation |
These can be found on monumental inscriptions. For quantities
larger than 20, other methods were used.
”The Aztecs, for example, used special
symbols such as a flag to represent 20, a feather to represent 400, and an
incense bag for 8000. To construct the number 946, you would draw two feathers
(2 x 400 = 800), seven flags (7 x 20 = 140), and six dots (6 x 1 = 6), the sum
of which (800 + 140 + 6) is 946.” (Lawrence, 1996-2012)
Ancient Scripts, 2014. Mesoamerican Writing Systems.
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ancientscripts.com/ma_ws.html. [Accessed 18 April 2014].
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