But within these few pages are prophecies related to the Maya calendar as well as a version of the Maya zodiac.
Photo Credit: gallica.bnf.fr
And finally, there’s the Grolier or Sáenz Codex:
Photo Credit: Justin Kerr/Brown University
It was unearthed less than 50 years ago and wasn’t fully authenticated until 2016:
Photo Credit: Public Domain/Wikipedia
Turns out this is the oldest of the remaining codices, dating back to the 13th century:
Photo Credit: Justin Kerr
It’s also the least complete, really more a collection of scraps:
Photo Credit: Justin Kerr
Other than what is written in their glyphs and what we can glean from their art and architecture, that’s just about all that remained of the Maya by the time of the last known purposeful destruction of the codices in 1697.
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…
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