Fifty-four years after the book was sold by marauders, the ancient Mayan pictographic text was recognized by authentic scholars last Thursday.
The 10 surviving pages of the "book" are known as the Mayan Codex and are about 900 years old. Experts suggest that the book was originally 20 pages long, but some of them were lost after centuries in a cave in the southern state of Chiapas. The document contains a number of observations and predictions related to the motion of the planet Venus. Maya texts are written in a series of syllabic glyphs, in which a stylized drawing often denotes a syllable.
Pages are 900 years old. Image: Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History.
The book, officially known as the Mayan Mexican Codex, was returned to the Mexican authorities by collector Josué Saenz in 1974. According to experts, it was created between 1021 and 1154 AD.
This oldest surviving Mayan text, was recently declared a genuine scholar by the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH).
Its simpler style compared to other known texts, combined with the fact that its whereabouts were not known for a long time, have led to years of doubt as to whether it is a real document or a well-made forgery.
It turned out that it was created in times of relative poverty compared to other similar works.
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