Discover the Oldest Book of the Americas: A Close Look at the Astronomical Maya Codex of Mexico

From the mighty Maya civ­i­liza­tion, which dom­i­nat­ed Mesoamer­i­ca for more than three and a half mil­len­nia, we have exact­ly four books. Only one of them pre­dates the arrival of Span­ish con­quis­ta­dors in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry: the Códice Maya de Méx­i­co, or Maya Codex of Mex­i­co, which was cre­at­ed between 1021 and 1152. Though incom­plete, and hard­ly in good shape oth­er­wise, its art­work — col­ored in places with pre­cious mate­ri­als — vivid­ly evokes an ancient world­view now all but lost. In the video above from the Get­ty Muse­um and Smarthis­to­ry, art his­to­ri­ans Andrew Turn­er and Lau­ren Kil­roy-Ewbank tell us what we’re look­ing at when we behold the remains of this sacred Mayan book, the old­est ever found in the Amer­i­c­as.

“This book has a con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry,” says Turn­er. “It was long con­sid­ered to be a fake due to the strange cir­cum­stances in which it sur­faced.” After its dis­cov­ery in a pri­vate col­lec­tion in Mex­i­co City in the nine­teen-six­ties, it was rumored to have been loot­ed from a cave in Chi­a­pas.

At first pro­nounced a fake by experts, due to its lack of resem­blance to the oth­er extant Mayan texts, it was only ver­i­fied as the gen­uine arti­cle in 2018. For a non-spe­cial­ist, the ques­tion remains: what is the Códice about? Its pur­pose, as Kil­roy-Ewbank puts it, is astro­nom­i­cal, relay­ing as it does “infor­ma­tion about the cycle of the plan­et Venus” — which, as Turn­er adds, “was con­sid­ered a dan­ger­ous plan­et” by the Mayans.

The Códice con­tains records 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 deter­mine — as many ancient civ­i­liza­tions did not — that it was both the Morn­ing Star and the Evening Star, although they seem to have been more inter­est­ed in what its move­ments revealed about the inten­tions of the deities they saw as con­trol­ling it, and thus the like­li­hood of events like war or famine. Those gods weren’t benev­o­lent: one page shows “a fright­ful skele­tal deity that has a blunt knife stick­ing out of his nasal cav­i­ty,” hold­ing “a giant jagged blade up” with one hand and “the hair of a cap­tive whose head he’s fresh­ly sev­ered” with the oth­er. That’s hard­ly the sort of image that comes to our mod­ern minds when we gaze up at the night sky, but then, we don’t see things like the Mayans did.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Move­ments of the Heav­ens

Behold the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum, “Per­haps the Most Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Book Ever Print­ed” (1540)

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

Explore the Flo­ren­tine Codex: A Bril­liant 16th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Doc­u­ment­ing Aztec Cul­ture Is Now Dig­i­tized & Avail­able Online

How the Ancient Mayans Used Choco­late as Mon­ey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.