NARRATOR: Up next on NOVA, Cracking the Maya Code. NARRATOR: In the 16th century, the flames of the Spanish Inquisition scorched the New World, decimating the Maya civilization. One blaze was ignited ...

Decoding ancient scripts is a remarkable journey into humanity’s past, unearthing forgotten tales and cultures. The cryptic symbols, etched onto stone, parchment, or clay, often remain as the only ...

From bizarre ancient markings to random numbers and letters, codes and ciphers have been used for millennia to send secret messages, hide identities and operate outside the law. Unravelling these ...

From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries. In October 2023, an e-mail pinged onto ...

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

New research on a clump of hair found buried deep in the ice of Greenland has revealed a snapshot of what ancient man looked like. To date DNA sequencing has used modern samples from living people, ...

The encrypted initiation rite of an ancient German secret society preoccupied with ophthalmology has fallen to modern language analysis tools including an online automatic translator. The 19th Century ...

NPR's Melissa Block talks to Oliver and Sheila Lawn, former code-breakers in World War II who have been called in to try to decipher the meaning of mysterious letters carved into a monument at ...

The telegraph without wire -- An extension of mouth : how the bàtá talks -- Other voices : the Omele Méta and the Ìyáàlù Dùndún -- Speaking in codes : Enà Bàtá -- Epilogue: Bàtá is the mouthpiece of ...