5 ms·

The Maya are still around, but the Maya civilization's institutions were all destroyed. And the Spanish made a point of seeking out all the Maya books [1] they

by tdeck 1y ago

The Maya are still around, but the Maya civilization's institutions were all destroyed. And the Spanish made a point of seeking out all the Maya books [1] they could find and burning them. So a lot of knowledge was lost. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

Cantinflas 1y ago
The link doesn't mention "seeking out" those books, in fact it mentions catholic priests both burning and lamenting the burn.
- wudangmonk 1y ago
  I guess that is implied since these things always happen this way, its not like book burners are just having a nice campfire and the books they dislike just happen to be close by.
- jacobolus 1y ago
  They hunted down all of the libraries, collected all of the books inside, and burned them in massive bonfires, accidentally saving a total of like 3 books which had already been shipped back to Europe as trophies. I think there are also some remaining fragments of a few others. One Spaniard wrote about it: > We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.
  - antognini 1y ago
    It is worth noting that the friar who organized this book burning was recalled to Spain to stand trial on account of his actions.
    - Larrikin 1y ago
      Why is that worth noting?
      - hnidiots3 1y ago
        Because it might not have been the “Spanish”, but certain people who ruined history. So it’s not fair to blame a whole country for the actions of a few.
        jacobolus 1y ago
        It's pretty fair to blame the entire social and political system of 16th century Spain, which at that time was centered on religious persecution, mass murder, large-scale theft and exploitation, and quasi-slavery, leading to centuries of profoundly racist tyranny in the Americas. The book-burning cultural genocide was just the cherry on top. (As is common for feudal occupiers of foreign lands, and by no means unique to Spain) the worst kinds of psychopaths were continually elevated to positions of authority and then granted almost complete impunity to do what they wanted, with an ideology that treated the recipients of their exploitation as sub-human.
        ffsm8 1y ago
        It's really not sane to do so, today. You're literally applying birth sin for it to make sense, because none of the Spanish people alive today had anything to do with it Even worse, what hnidiots3 was trying to convey: 99% of the population that were alive during the time period you'd have described as "Spaniards" were entirely uninvolved in these actions, and wouldn't have supported them either, likely. While the Mayan culture was literally doing human sacrifices - the average person living in Spain wasn't inherently evil and wanting to cause suffering to other people. Despite their culture being kinda shit. They just wanted to live their live, which was mostly being a farmer and working.
        jacobolus 1y ago
        [flagged]
  - pqtyw 1y ago
    It's complicated in the sense that there were both people trying to burn and destroy anything and those trying to preserve the books and the language doing their own stuff in parallel.
agentcoops 1y ago
For this reason, one of the most fascinating historical relics to me are the Incan Quipu [0]. Not only because their logic appears to be 'proto-computational' (at the very least a very complex system of encoding numeric and narrative information through sequences of knots that were also used directly for calculations), but since, neither in the form of a valuable material like gold nor obviously a book to be destroyed, a large enough number survived to this day. There are few traces of the past we know exist that might contain everything from astronomical calculations to old social-institutional histories. They're comparable in that sense to the Heculaneum manuscripts, which researchers have lately made great progress on with deep learning [1]. I hope an equivalent initiative someday starts on the Quipu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu [1] https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/ https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/
- pqtyw 1y ago
  > narrative information through sequences of knots It's unlikely any complex narratives could be encoded there, though. Possibly a bit like the e.g. the Mycenaean Linear B script. Which is fully decoded and well understood. But despite having a full fledged writing system they mainly used it for accounting and such. They can tell us about how many goats, sheep and various good they had they had but don't tell as much about the society or history as such. Heculaneum manuscripts are kind of the opposite from the Quipu in the sense that we have zero issues understanding the actual text/symbols just extracting them from the destroyed scrolls is rather complicated. Minoan tablets are maybe a bit closer and little progress has been made there (then again we are fully capable of reading the script just have no clue about the language it was written in).
  - agentcoops 1y ago
    I agree with your point about the Heculaneum, but my understanding is we're far enough with research into the form of the Quipus to know that they aren't simply either a linear script or merely accounting data. For a long time, it was thought that they indeed contained only the latter, but my certainly non-specialist grasp on the matter is that we now know they were used to encode much more than that. In addition to being used directly to verify calculations [0], they contained "histories, laws and ceremonies, and economic accounts" or, as the Spanish testified at the time: "[W]hatever books can tell of histories and laws and ceremonies and accounts of business is all supplied by the quipus so accurately that the result is astonishing"[1]. My---again crude---understanding is this was through embedding categories, names and relational data in addition to numbers, signaled not least through texture and color [2]. I likely come across as if I'm trying to over-inflate the Incan knots, but really it's just to say they appear to be a rather fascinating in-between of legal-administrative inscriptions, whose discovery transformed understanding of Roman institutions over the last century or so, and the straight-forward manuscripts of the Herculaneum. [0] My elementary and probably out-of-date recollection: an emissary would come to towns with Quipus containing work orders, which would be validated with the community on the spot. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27087183 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27087183 [2] https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-abstract/65/1/1/133085/Toward-the-Decipherment-of-a-Set-of-Mid-Colonial https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-abstract/65..., https://www.jstor.org/stable/483319 https://www.jstor.org/stable/483319
shadyKeystrokes 11mo ago
Well, we could attempt to reconstruct it from history and similar landempires. We could take babylonian or russian history and transpose it into the language. Then recreate some superiority atrocity justification mythology ("gods chosen people"/"sinners-born-unpure"-must be purged.) Then we take all the tribes that sided with the spaniards, whose history they wiped out and invent some colorful horror-stories that other them. So, the spaniards of the new world getting trampeled by the old world, who brought gonorreha home,creating hyper puritan std ethics, voila.. nothing of value was lost.

by tdeck 1y ago

Cantinflas 1y ago

The link doesn't mention "seeking out" those books, in fact it mentions catholic priests both burning and lamenting the burn.

wudangmonk 1y ago
I guess that is implied since these things always happen this way, its not like book burners are just having a nice campfire and the books they dislike just happen to be close by.
jacobolus 1y ago
They hunted down all of the libraries, collected all of the books inside, and burned them in massive bonfires, accidentally saving a total of like 3 books which had already been shipped back to Europe as trophies. I think there are also some remaining fragments of a few others. One Spaniard wrote about it: > We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.
- antognini 1y ago
  It is worth noting that the friar who organized this book burning was recalled to Spain to stand trial on account of his actions.
  - Larrikin 1y ago
    Why is that worth noting?
    - hnidiots3 1y ago
      Because it might not have been the “Spanish”, but certain people who ruined history. So it’s not fair to blame a whole country for the actions of a few.
      - jacobolus 1y ago
        It's pretty fair to blame the entire social and political system of 16th century Spain, which at that time was centered on religious persecution, mass murder, large-scale theft and exploitation, and quasi-slavery, leading to centuries of profoundly racist tyranny in the Americas. The book-burning cultural genocide was just the cherry on top. (As is common for feudal occupiers of foreign lands, and by no means unique to Spain) the worst kinds of psychopaths were continually elevated to positions of authority and then granted almost complete impunity to do what they wanted, with an ideology that treated the recipients of their exploitation as sub-human.
        ffsm8 1y ago
        It's really not sane to do so, today. You're literally applying birth sin for it to make sense, because none of the Spanish people alive today had anything to do with it Even worse, what hnidiots3 was trying to convey: 99% of the population that were alive during the time period you'd have described as "Spaniards" were entirely uninvolved in these actions, and wouldn't have supported them either, likely. While the Mayan culture was literally doing human sacrifices - the average person living in Spain wasn't inherently evil and wanting to cause suffering to other people. Despite their culture being kinda shit. They just wanted to live their live, which was mostly being a farmer and working.
        jacobolus 1y ago
        [flagged]
- pqtyw 1y ago
  It's complicated in the sense that there were both people trying to burn and destroy anything and those trying to preserve the books and the language doing their own stuff in parallel.

agentcoops 1y ago

For this reason, one of the most fascinating historical relics to me are the Incan Quipu [0]. Not only because their logic appears to be 'proto-computational' (at the very least a very complex system of encoding numeric and narrative information through sequences of knots that were also used directly for calculations), but since, neither in the form of a valuable material like gold nor obviously a book to be destroyed, a large enough number survived to this day. There are few traces of the past we know exist that might contain everything from astronomical calculations to old social-institutional histories. They're comparable in that sense to the Heculaneum manuscripts, which researchers have lately made great progress on with deep learning [1]. I hope an equivalent initiative someday starts on the Quipu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu [1] https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/ https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/

pqtyw 1y ago
> narrative information through sequences of knots It's unlikely any complex narratives could be encoded there, though. Possibly a bit like the e.g. the Mycenaean Linear B script. Which is fully decoded and well understood. But despite having a full fledged writing system they mainly used it for accounting and such. They can tell us about how many goats, sheep and various good they had they had but don't tell as much about the society or history as such. Heculaneum manuscripts are kind of the opposite from the Quipu in the sense that we have zero issues understanding the actual text/symbols just extracting them from the destroyed scrolls is rather complicated. Minoan tablets are maybe a bit closer and little progress has been made there (then again we are fully capable of reading the script just have no clue about the language it was written in).
- agentcoops 1y ago
  I agree with your point about the Heculaneum, but my understanding is we're far enough with research into the form of the Quipus to know that they aren't simply either a linear script or merely accounting data. For a long time, it was thought that they indeed contained only the latter, but my certainly non-specialist grasp on the matter is that we now know they were used to encode much more than that. In addition to being used directly to verify calculations [0], they contained "histories, laws and ceremonies, and economic accounts" or, as the Spanish testified at the time: "[W]hatever books can tell of histories and laws and ceremonies and accounts of business is all supplied by the quipus so accurately that the result is astonishing"[1]. My---again crude---understanding is this was through embedding categories, names and relational data in addition to numbers, signaled not least through texture and color [2]. I likely come across as if I'm trying to over-inflate the Incan knots, but really it's just to say they appear to be a rather fascinating in-between of legal-administrative inscriptions, whose discovery transformed understanding of Roman institutions over the last century or so, and the straight-forward manuscripts of the Herculaneum. [0] My elementary and probably out-of-date recollection: an emissary would come to towns with Quipus containing work orders, which would be validated with the community on the spot. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27087183 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27087183 [2] https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-abstract/65/1/1/133085/Toward-the-Decipherment-of-a-Set-of-Mid-Colonial https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-abstract/65..., https://www.jstor.org/stable/483319 https://www.jstor.org/stable/483319

shadyKeystrokes 11mo ago

Well, we could attempt to reconstruct it from history and similar landempires. We could take babylonian or russian history and transpose it into the language. Then recreate some superiority atrocity justification mythology ("gods chosen people"/"sinners-born-unpure"-must be purged.) Then we take all the tribes that sided with the spaniards, whose history they wiped out and invent some colorful horror-stories that other them. So, the spaniards of the new world getting trampeled by the old world, who brought gonorreha home,creating hyper puritan std ethics, voila.. nothing of value was lost.