The Maya Wrote Books, And The Europeans Burned Them
Long strips of sturdy paper created from the inner bark of fig trees were used by the Maya to write books in their intricate hieroglyphic alphabet. The Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, and the Paris Codex are the only Maya codices that have survived to this day. (There's also the Grolier Codex, which is fragmented and disputed by scholars.) Many more Maya books perished as a result of the humid circumstances in Mesoamerica—or the arrival of Europeans, who destroyed Maya literature on purpose.
The Maya had already abandoned their vast cities in favor of agrarian societies when the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica. They kept their conventional religious views, though. This angered Spanish philosophers such as Bishop Diego de Landa, who set out to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. When that proved impossible, he took a more drastic approach: he burned and destroyed the Mayan writings in an attempt to eradicate their culture.
The Conquistadors even had the gall to refer to the Maya as barbarians. These extraordinary people had built one of the world's most advanced scientific nations... Despite this, a group of men in desperate search of financial prosperity burnt and damaged their collective cultural knowledge
