- Mayan glyph
I recently watched a National Geographic episode on the Mayans. It seems archaelogists are still digging up old Mayan pyramids, with amazing finds. One of the more difficult tasks encountered in studying this culture, is trying to analyze their symbols, written on walls, stone, cups and all sorts of items.
I was struck by one of the statements in there. Apparently, it can easily take decades to try and decode these symbols, in an attempt to assign meaning to them. See also here for another quote on this:
The Mayans recorded their history in hieroglyphics, a writing system that used pictures and certain symbols. Archaeologists today are still trying to decode the many hieroglyphics found on religious temples, stairs, and the walls of homes and palaces.
- Random OWL sample, taken from random Swoogle search result for “owl”
It seems to me, much of the work that these researchers perform, is also done in a very ad-hoc fashion within organizations, when they are trying to decipher the glyphs found in their information systems (whether in relational databases, cobol copybooks, edi files, xml or even rdf/owl files – e.g., see “Data smoke and mirrors”). While the original glyph authors have not passed away a very long time ago, it is very likely that they might not be found anymore within the organization.
The work performed on the Mayan glyphs is sponsored through government funding, research programmes, National Geographic and many other sources. I wonder who pays for the organizational archaelogists…
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Imagine employees of your organization making statements such as the following:
“What emerged was startling: 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again at numerous sites (see illustration). Admittedly, some of the symbols are pretty basic, like straight lines, circles and triangles, but the fact that many of the more complex designs also appeared in several places hinted to von Petzinger and Nowell that they were meaningful – perhaps even the seeds of written communication.”
From: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527481.200-the-writing-on-the-cave-wall.html?full=true