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I'm curious to what degree pre-Columbian civilizations aren't well understood due to the lack of evidence beyond our control, versus the lack of study/attention
by standardUser 11mo ago
I'm curious to what degree pre-Columbian civilizations aren't well understood due to the lack of evidence beyond our control, versus the lack of study/attention to the region. I imagine the dense and difficult terrain doesn't help either.
- r14c 11mo agoA huge part of the problem is the whole "burning every Maya book" thing that some spanish dudes decided to embark on. Various ethnic cleansing campaigns over the last two centuries or so, not to mention the impact of disease. Its a real tragedy the colonizers didn't think to preserve the world they were conquering.
- dreamcompiler 11mo agoModern Maya are starting to learn how to read and write their own language again but that only happened in the last 40 years or so. (They never forgot how to speak it.) Most of their written knowledge was lost forever as you point out.
- gessha 11mo agoReboot magazine recently published an article about making a Mayan keyboard: https://joinreboot.org/p/how-to-build-a-mayan-keyboard https://joinreboot.org/p/how-to-build-a-mayan-keyboard