Over the millennia there have been many unique codes of language created by people who want to preserve their history or who just want to communicate with each other. We will highlight just a few of them to give you an idea of some of them that exist.

     The Codex Nuttall was created in the 14th century A.D. before Columbus came to America. The Codex Nuttall is made of pieced together deer hide and is almost 40 feet long and about 6 ½ inches tall. This piece was folded so that it appears to be a fan shaped book, containing 98 pages of paintings and brightly colored glyphs. This book was taken from the Mayans when the Spanish Explorers invaded their home country. Some sections of this book are pictures of events in Mayan history. Others are religious texts, sometimes showing sacrifices or drawings of the many gods these people worshiped. Emperor Charles V of Spain first thought they were “...probably intended for the amusement of children but...so foolish it would bore them.” From this work we learn that the Mayans had the ability to record their history and pass it down to subsequent generations. These drawings give us a glimpse into a lost culture and is just one of many unique written languages.

     Another interesting code has to do with Native Americans. Have you ever heard of the Navajo Code Talkers? The language of the Navajos was unwritten and very complicated. It was almost impossible to decipher if you didn’t know Navaho and was understood by fewer than 30 non-Navajos at the time of WWII. During World War II, more than 400 speakers of the Navajo language served in the United States Marine Corp from 1942 to 1945. Their job was to convey top-secret information using the Navajo language in a code. It was a lot faster than Morse code and nearly impossible to decode. The idea came from WWI, when the Native American language Choctaw was used as a code. The Japanese were excellent at deciphering codes, but they could never decode the Navajo one. It is said that this code saved many peoples’ lives by helping to end the war sooner. "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." (Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division)

Sources:

"The Codex Nuttall". Chapala.com. Accessed11March 2009. <http://www.chapala.com/chapala/magnife centmexico/codexnuttall/codexnuttall.html>

Gascoigne, Bamber. "History of Language". Historyworld.net. Accessed11March 2009. <http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/ PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab13>

“Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet.” Naval History and Heritage Command. 12 Aug. 1997. Navy & Marine Corps WWII Commemorative Committee.  Accessed 11 March 2009.  <http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm>

“Who are the Code Talkers?” Navajo Code Talkers. 2004.  Accessed11March 2009. <http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/>

Picture Sources:

8 Deer Tiger Claw. “File:Oaxaca ocho venado.png” Wikipedia.org.  Accessed 11 March 2009.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oaxaca_ocho_venado.png>
Used under the Wikipedia commons agreement. See below to view.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License>

“Navajo Code Talkers.” A3 - WWII History. Accessed 11 March 2009.
<http://wwiihistory-a3.blogspot.com/2009/02/navajo-code-talkers.html>