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Mayan Civilization

Comalcalco was a major Mayan port city that was believed to have flourished between A.D 700 to A.D 900. Though others place it much older, and even perhaps older still, since the finds at Nakbe in the Petén, it may go back to 1000 BCE, and beyond. Since there was no rock quarry or stone to use in the area, they built the buildings out of bricks made of baked mud.

The Maya raised HUGE structures made out of these bricks. That in itself makes this place unique to all the other Mayan locations. But, you see, the bricks have inscriptions on them.

The map of the Mayan Zone

In 1977 and 1978 the National Institute of Anthropology and History excavated the site and discovered that it was made up entirely of these bricks. And the site is HUGE. What they also found was that approximately 3% of the bricks had inscriptions on them, on the INSIDE. In a study conducted by Mexican archeologist Neil Steede of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, he discovered that 3,671 bricks had inscriptions. Of these bricks, 2,129 had Mayan inscriptions on them. But 499 of the bricks were found to have completely out of place inscriptions. 13.6% of the bricks were found to have Old World inscriptions on them. These inscriptions include writing in Arabic, Phoenician, Libyan, Egyptian, Ogam, Tifinag, Chinese, Burmese, and Paliburmese. In all, about 17.3% of the bricks were inscribed with different languages, but if they had any Mayan inscriptions on them, they were designated to the Mayan inscription pile. Other bricks from this site had drawings on them, and 308 of the bricks were completely unknown and indecipherable.

An ancient Mayan Monument

According to Steede, all of the bricks were carefully photographed, and copies sent to the Epigraphic Society of San Diego, California, where the languages were identified and verified. Several of the bricks had Mayan inscriptions and another language---typical translations. Some of the bricks were decorated with elephants, and other creatures not indigenous to the Americas.

Reference:

http://www.foxvox.org

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