Only 4 Texts Remain from the Maya Civilization After Thousands Were Destroyed
Despite the fact that we are not very far removed from their heyday, we know very little about Maya civilization.
And it’s not because the Maya weren’t into recording their history.
The Maya were prolific writers and actually evolved from using scrolls to a form of folded paper called the codex right around the same time as the Romans, though each appears to be independent of the other.
[...]
Maya glyphs and the records of the Spanish conquistadors themselves attest to thousands of these codices existing by the time the two cultures met in the 16th century.
But, due to their being destroyed by priests, conquistadors, ship raiders, and even time and mold, only about 22 codices, of which only four have Maya origin, exist today.
None of them are complete, and none have their original covers.
[...]
And you might have noticed that the oldest one only goes back to 200-300 years before the Spanish conquest.
We know that the codices went back at least 800 years prior to that, so we’re essentially looking at the tip of a fingernail and trying to guess what the hand looked like.
And that’s how the soul of a culture gets erased from history…
See also: Burning the Maya Books: The 1562 Tragedy at Mani
The last codices destroyed were those of Nojpetén, Guatemala in 1697, the last city conquered in the Americas. (Wikipedia)
A world historical crime. We live in a world where one of the great branches of culture was hacked off and burned
It's so painful to think about tbh. Written language only ever independently developed four times: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica. We've almost entirely lost that last branch. That whole writing system of glyphs, all the culture around it, intentionally destroyed. Barbarism to the highest degree.
These glyphs are pretty sick.
I wonder if Chinese/Japanese characters looked this "graphical" before they were simplified.
Oracle Bone script, the earliest written Chinese, is definitely a lot more graphical than modern Chinese, but not nearly as organic or graphic as these Mesoamerican glyphs. That's why losing all of this is so tragic, there's really nothing like it!
The language isn't lost, it should be pointed out. Millions of people still speak Mayan languages and some continue to use the writing system for signs and monuments. There's also an effort to create a simplified version (ala simplified Chinese) to make it easier for everyday use.
Yeah I've even read about a revival movement of writing books exclusively in the language. Their resilience is impressive in the face of losing so much of their written history.
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When you think about the incredible explosions of creativity that happen when different cultural traditions are exposed to each other...
This is an annoying thing to say, but I think about how much creativity, color, and culture comes from South America. A non-brutalized (I know less about central America but I assume) Central America would have done some shit like compete in the realm of anime. That's a disgusting amount of lore, stories, etc. lost to the sands of time.