How many people could read and write?
The concept of universal literacy is a modern one. In most societies, reading and writing, if needed at all, was confined to a class of specialists: lawyers, scholars, priests. Even societies possessing the easy-to-learn alphabet have restricted literacy to a select few, for most of history. (An early exception was Judea, where about 2000 years ago it became customary for the head of household to read from the Torah on Sabbath evening.) We have no explicit information about Maya literacy rates, but we can make an estimate by comparing with Japan, whose writing system is closely comparable to Maya. It takes a Japanese schoolchild twelve solid years to learn to write; we Americans learn the basics in a year or two most of us. (Despite this, Japan has a higher literacy rate than the USA.) It is only when a nation prioritizes full literacy that they come anywhere near achieving it. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, where scribe school also lasted twelve years, the scribal class was a tight
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