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 ...

BEATA MEGYESI strode past the Pontifical Swiss Guards, in their Renaissance-era uniforms. She was headed not for the Sistine Chapel or St Peter’s Basilica, but the Vatican’s archives. Precious few ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...