Love this guy and his cat, but can't resist shouting out Tatiana Proskouriakoff, who expanded on his work to actually read the stelae inscriptions . . . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatiana_Proskouriakoff "Her greatest contribution was considered the breakthrough for Maya hieroglyphic decipherment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While researching the chronology of changing styles of Maya sculpture, she discovered that the dates shown on the monumental stelae were actually historical, the birth, accession, and death dates for Maya rulers.[6] Analyzing the pattern of dates and hieroglyphs, she was able to demonstrate a sequence of seven rulers who ruled over a span of two hundred years. Knowing the context of the inscriptions, Maya epigraphers were then able to decipher the hieroglyphs."