Right, but the scale is entirely different. The Conquistadors actively tried to memory-hole Aztec/Maya culture post conquest by burning all their written conte

Right, but the scale is entirely different. The Conquistadors actively tried to memory-hole Aztec/Maya culture post conquest by burning all their written content. If you break the oral tradition by dispersing groups and you burn written records, you can wipe a culture from history. Conquistadors didn't succeed at this, but they very well tried.