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Comment by pettycashstash2 | Hacker News Reader

We just returned from Cancun, where we toured the ruins of Tulum. The maya apparently had folded books, which out of thousands only 3 remain. To see them, you have to travel to Madrid, Paris or Dresden. Apparently the rest were burned by Spanish when they arrived in late 1580. Somehow I was overwhelmed with a huge sense of loss when I heard this. Knowledge from around 3000 bc to 1580 or so just burned.

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> We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa

Same with the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, who kept meticulous bureaucratic records. We know quite a bit about them thanks to the friars who got to see a lot of the records while Cortes' expedition were guests (/captors) of Montezuma. They all burned during the final battle for Tenochtitlan.

> Knowledge from around 3000 bc to 1580 or so just burned

If it makes you feel any better, it’s likely a LOT less time that that. They didn’t develop their complex social culture until ~750BC & the earliest sculptural examples of Maya script are ~300BC.

It’s extremely unlikely any books the Spanish burned dated back until then but that’s the likely earliest they would have been.

Still a massive cultural crime & attempted genocide tho

Actual texts might only span ~1900 years, but if they are anything like European cultures their texts also contain written recordings of oral tradition. That would extend the time window, though with decreased accuracy.

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