Maya script
The only fully developed writing system of pre-Columbian America
The oldest known Maya inscriptions, from San Bartolo, date to around the 3rd century BC. The script combined some 800 syllabic and word signs and could record any sentence of the language. The Spanish burned almost all Maya books; only four codices survive. The key to decipherment came in the 1950s from Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov, who showed that the signs recorded sounds.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 4th century BC
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Middle East
- 323 BC Death of Alexander the Great — 23 years earlier
Africa
- c. 285 BC Library of Alexandria — 15 years later
Asia
- c. 322 BC Founding of the Maurya Empire — 22 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Mencius (aged 72)
- Chandragupta Maurya (aged 40)
- Euclid (aged 25)
- Ashoka (aged 4)
- Zhuangzi (aged 69)
- Ptolemy I Soter (aged 67)
- Pytheas (aged 50)
- Qu Yuan (aged 40)
- Arsinoe II (aged 16)