The concept of symbols representing words and ideas had taken the art world by storm, imbuing the world with a keen interest ...

The symbols they used were called hieroglyphs, which comes from a Greek word meaning ‘sacred carving’. The ancient Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs had been invented by the gods.

The quest to decipher Maya hieroglyphs began with the very Spanish ... proved him right and also revealed that the Maya even had a symbol for zero, which appeared on Mesoamerican carvings as ...