Writing Like the Maya
Long ago, a group of people called the Maya lived in the rainforest. They built big cities and tall stone temples made of rock.
The Maya were very smart and studied the stars in the night sky. They also created a very special way to write down their stories.
They did not use an alphabet like the one we use today. Instead, they used cool pictures called hieroglyphs.
We can call these pictures glyphs for short. The glyphs look like small squares with round, soft corners.
Some glyphs look like the heads of birds or animals. Other glyphs look like human faces or tiny hands.
Maya artists carved these shapes into giant stone walls. They also painted them in books made from tree bark.
People who did the writing were called scribes. They used brushes made from animal hair to paint.
They used black and red ink to make the pictures bright. Being a scribe was a very important job in the city.
Writing with glyphs was like putting a puzzle together. One glyph could stand for a whole word or a big idea.
For example, a glyph might mean the word for "king." Another glyph might mean "water" or "mountain."
Some glyphs worked in a different way too. They stood for small sounds instead of whole words.
- Hieroglyphs:
- A special way of writing that uses pictures instead of an alphabet.
- Scribe:
- A person whose job is to write or paint records and stories.
- Glyph:
- A short name for a single picture in the Maya writing system.
- Rainforest:
- A thick forest where it rains a lot, which is where the Maya lived.
- carved:
- Cut shapes, letters, or pictures into a hard surface like stone or wood.
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- 1Where did the Maya people live long ago?
- 2What did the Maya study in the night sky?
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About this informational passage for Lower Elementary
“Writing Like the Maya” is a informational reading passage about Maya Hieroglyphs, written for Lower Elementary. It takes about 2 minutes to read (320 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.