From the mighty Maya civilization, which dominated Mesoamerica for greater than three and a half millennia, we’ve got precisely 4 books. Solely considered one of them predates the arrival of Spanish conquistadors within the sixteenth century: the Códice Maya de México, or Maya Codex of Mexico, which was created between 1021 and 1152. Although incomplete, and exhaustingly in good condition othersmart, its artworkwork — colored in locations with precious materials — vividly evokes an historical worldview now all however misplaced. In the video above from the Getty Museum and Smarthistory, artwork historians Andrew Fliper and Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank inform us what we’re looking at after we behold the stays of this sacred Mayan e-book, the outdatedest ever discovered within the Americas.
“This e-book has a controversial history,” says Fliper. “It was lengthy considered to be a pretend because of the unusual circumstances during which it surconfronted.” After its discovery in a private collection in Mexico Metropolis within the 9teen-sixties, it was rumored to have been looted from a collapse Chiapas.
At first professionalnounced a pretend by specialists, as a consequence of its lack of resemblance to the other extant Mayan texts, it was solely verified because the genuine article in 2018. For a non-specialist, the question stays: what’s the Códice about? Its purpose, as Kilroy-Ewbank places it, is astronomical, relaying because it does “information concerning the cycle of the planet Venus” — which, as Fliper provides, “was considered a dangerous planet” by the Mayans.
The Códice contains information of Venus’ 584-day cycle over the course of 140 years, testifying to the scrutiny Mayan astronomers gave to its complicated pattern of rising and falling. They thus managed to discouragemine — as many historical civilizations didn’t — that it was each the Morning Star and the Night Star, though they appear to have been extra interested in what its transferments revealed concerning the intentions of the deities they noticed as controlling it, and thus the likelihood of occasions like struggle or famine. These gods weren’t benevolent: one web page reveals “a frightful skeletal deity that has a blunt knife sticking out of his nasal cavity,” maintaining “a large jagged blade up” with one hand and “the hair of a captive whose head he’s recently severed” with the other. That’s exhaustingly the form of picture that involves our modern minds after we gaze up on the evening sky, however then, we don’t see issues just like the Mayans did.
through Aeon
Related content:
A 400-Yr-Previous Ring that Unfolds to Observe the Transferments of the Heavens
The Historical Astronomy of Stonehenge Decoded
How the Historical Mayans Used Chocolate as Money
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
