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by goolulusaurs
1691 days ago
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I read recently for the first time about what happened to the Maya at the hands of the Spanish and I was shocked at how bad it was. Even just in the context of the destruction of knowledge it was terrible. There were thousands of books recording centuries of precontact American history that were all destroyed by the Spanish. Only four examples out of the many thousands of piece of Maya literature have survived to the present. A few quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices: "Our knowledge of ancient Maya thought must represent only a tiny fraction of the whole picture, for of the thousands of books in which the full extent of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern times (as though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based upon three prayer books and Pilgrim's Progress)."
— Michael D. Coe "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 regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction."
— Bishop Diego de Landa |
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