MAYA MYSTERY

Mayan codices

Mayan sculpted glyphs

In the mid 1550’s the Catholic clergy under the direction of Bishop Diego de Landa collected and burned the ancient writings of the Maya in the Mesoamerica region.  These books were in the form of codices written on fig tree bark in the unique Mayan hieroglyphic language.  The Spanish masters felt they were ridding the Mayan people of idolatry.  Innumerable clay and stone artifacts were also smashed and burned.

“Thus, flames devoured the precious Maya books and the flames destroyed the cornerstone of Maya civilization, reduced to ashes the scientific backbone of a highly civilized people and sounded the death knell of independent Maya thought.” (Blom, The Conquest of Yucatan p 109).

The clergy banned the writing of hieroglyphics and within a generation the ability to write and read this remarkable language died.  Fortunately, the clergy could not destroy the writings that were sculpted on the temples, palaces, stela monuments and pyramids that lay hidden under mounds of decay in the Mesoamerican jungles.  When these ancient city-state buildings were discovered and reported by John Lloyd Stephens in 1841, an effort to revive the ancient Mayan writings began.

In the 1950’s the code began to emerge with brilliant work by numerous language “detectives”  This was aided by the discovery of the Dresden codex which had 78 leaves, each 3.5 inches by 8.7 inches, of text and pictures.  Since then the ancient Mayan language is now 90%  recovered with only a few glyphs untranslated. 

Two other mysteries have not yet been solved.  First how did the advanced systems of mathematics, writing, and astronomy seemingly appear fully developed out of thin air in around 600 BC?  Mayan language is one of only five independent systems known to human development.  Secondly, why did the social and political system of city-states that had been successful for 15 centuries suddenly cease to flourish around 900 AD?  The whole region went into a steep, irreversible decline with no more major building projects and no more genealogical chronologies carved.  Perhaps the destroyed codices could have given us the answers of why these kingdoms were abandoned.