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Much of historical knowledge comes from the accidental survival of written documents.

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That means that history is half interpretation and half left to chance. So what happens when

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a culture’s documents are destroyed? Find out today on Footnoting History!

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Welcome to another episode of Footnoting History. I am your host, Lesley Skousen, and today

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I’d like to talk about the rich history of the Mayan culture of the region that makes

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up part of modern day Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The Maya Civilization occupied much

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of this region for about 1500 years, or as many as 3000 years, depending on how you measure

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the very early settlements that would later grow into the Maya People. The final groups

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came to an end by 1697, with the fall of the final city to hold out, the Itza capital

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Nojpetén. But the Maya Civilization had lost its power long before that, hastened

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by the arrival of the Spanish.

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The Maya are a fascinating culture to study and an important part of rounding out world

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history. Among other things, they understood and used the number zero, which was a controversial

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mathematical concept in Arabic numbers and downright blasphemous in Catholic medieval

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Europe. I mean: they are the people who discovered how to make chocolate!

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They harnessed the power of the jungle and built cities within it: bold, enormous buildings,

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with pyramids, roads, palaces, and large-scale stone art settled within rainforests. Some

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of those pyramids are among the biggest in the world, joining Egypt and Cambodia for

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sheer size and complexity.

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Furthermore, they created a complicated and accurate calendar that plotted out human

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history for another half dozen centuries -- famously ending in 2012. Much of their calendar keeping

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was related to religious beliefs, development of math, and fastidious tracking of astronomy

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so that they could accurately pinpoint the dates and times of religious elements, you know, such

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as the movement of the sun or the timing of an eclipse. And finally, they were one of

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five world religions to create unique writing systems.

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So, why don’t we have their written documents? More on that later.

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In Charles C. Mann’s eminently readable book "1491," he explores common misconceptions and

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more recent research to convey what life might have been like in the Americas the year before

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Columbus infamously set sail across the Atlantic. Only recently have we really begun to learn

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about the great Moche people, whose stories were lost to time due to the highly unusual

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30-year long drought that was followed immediately by an unexpected 30-year-long flood season.

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Imagine the joy of the waters after having struggled through 30 years of dryness, only

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to have the waters rise and rise and rise for 30 more years. No wonder the Moche people have lost everything,

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and we know very little about them. But their story illustrates a truth about all of human civilization and the study of history.

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So much of what we know about history is pure accident. It requires so much left to chance:

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the first thing you need is a person who has to remember to write the event down, for one. Then there has to be a reliable system

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for describing what happened as clearly and accurately as possible. Beyond that, the recording

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needs to be carved into a physical object that will carry printed words or images for

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thousands of years. Many ancient records have not survived simply because the papyrus or the wood pulp

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paper has disintegrated, leaving only vellum (which is paper made from animal skins) or other hardy

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pages to survive. Even once all those things are in place – the writer, the language,

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the object or paper – there is still more. The object itself might not survive. It could be lost

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during a move, or hidden in someone's attic, or washed away during a flood or even lost to a sinking ship. Or the

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object might survive itself, but the language has not survived. Whole languages from the past are now

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gone forever, so even discovering a tablet might not allow us to read its words. Consider Linear

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A, a form of Greek that survives but in insufficient forms for us to figure out what it actually says.

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For many great and celebrated peoples, very little remains for us to learn about them.

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The world’s history has been pieced together on very few written documents. Textbooks,

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they speak with such authority, they make it sound like it's so clear, as though all of history is known and organized into neat little groups

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and then ranked by importance. If it isn’t there in the textbook, it didn’t happen. But of course that’s not the case.

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You’d never realize that it’s all guesswork and a lot of luck. Instead, historians draw from enormous

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surviving cities, technology, myths, stories passed on by word of mouth, and even documents

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written by observers. In the case of the Maya, those documents came from the Spanish conquistadors.

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Those primary sources allow historians to piece together more about Mayan history – and what was

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once was a major civilization in human history.

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Those who are unfamiliar with the history of the Americas may assume that cultures without

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a lot of surviving documentation didn't really have much of a history. It’s something that my own students

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tell me over and over again, portraying what they don’t know as though past civilizations

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felt their story was not worth writing down. But history is so much more complicated than

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that! What makes or prevents stories from surviving to the present (or into the future) has

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a great deal to do with chance and sabotage than with anything else.

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Europe is a good example of luck playing in their favor. Some of our most celebrated works

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began as verbal poems, spread by wandering bards who would memorize them and tell them

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to different towns in exchange for lodgings, food, or money. The vast majority of these

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works have been lost to time, because no one wrote them down in a form that survives. Some

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of the most famous were not only preserved by chance, Homer’s "Iliad," for example, probably just a

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combination of famous folk stories finally put to page because of a single, outstanding verbal

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performance. Homer didn't just sit down and begin writing; in fact, he may not have

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existed, he could be an invented character or perhaps just a celebrated performer of oral stories.

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Which brings us, more again, to the enduring legacy of the Maya.

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Much of what we know about the Maya comes from their long-standing architecture, their cities,

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and their art. Visiting Mexico allows you to see such enormous buildings standing still today.

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But what is missing is that cultural context we might learn from existing written

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materials describing rituals, government, games, and other markers of civilization. We see the tremendous fields of the famous ball game, but

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we have nothing to tell us how it was played or what it meant. When the Spanish began to arrive, they built settlements throughout Central Mexico and beyond. The

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actions came with a papal support – the pope supporting their mission – which allowed the Spanish to mix a search for natural resources

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and riches with a mission of a higher purpose: saving souls for God. The Catholic aspect

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of this imperialism cannot be under-estimated. It was an incredible part of those missions.

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The Spanish conquest occurred during a centuries-long period of strong Catholic conflict including

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the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation. Just prior to sailing the world, the Spanish

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kingdoms had finally united and beaten back a strong Muslim occupation from North African Moors that had lasted around 700 years.

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After their victory, those who stayed had to prove their Christian faith and heritage

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or be expelled and sent out of Spain. This strong focus on Christian ideology would soon inform much of the Spanish

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attitudes as they encountered new cultures, traditions, rituals, and religions in the

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so-called New World. The emphasis on believing in the “right” brand of Christianity only

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intensified in the 1500s, with the growing Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-reformation

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occurring in Europe. These ideals played out with the cultural differences happening in

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the Americas. In some ways, the Catholicism matched really well with long-standing traditions among the Mayan and

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other Mesoamerican cultures. There were prominent features of morality and community that placed

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a premium on blood, the blood and body of sacrificial people – through human sacrifice in some

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religions and through the symbolic eating and drinking Christ’s body and blood in

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others. Local Mayan people were fairly quick to convert, whether as a symbol of openness

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to the new European arrivals or as an easy adaptation of their own existing religious

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beliefs. At first the Spaniards were pleased to see a pretty easy mass conversion. But soon they

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realized that the conversion was not complete. In secret, local communities continued to practice

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the traditional rituals. Spells, magic, miracles, and sacrifice (of both humans and animals)

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persisted throughout the Spanish occupied areas.

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This is where we meet Diego de Landa, 1524-1579. Born in Guadalajara, Spain, he followed the

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Franciscan tradition, eventually traveling to the Americas in order to minister to them

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and convert them to Catholicism. We know much about his feelings and attitudes towards the

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people of the Yucatán in particular because of his own writings, some which were private

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diaries and some were published later in memoirs. Landa was quick to order an

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Inquisition among the people in the Yucatán so that he could root out true Christians

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against those who just cooperated for economic or social opportunities.

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He was particularly concerned with

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the practice of human sacrifice and the worship of idols. The clash of cultures between Spain

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and the Maya had many layers to it, including a pretty significant understanding.

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He was particularly concerned with the practice of human sacrifice and the worship of idols.

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The clash of cultures between Spain and the Maya had many layers to it, including a misunderstanding of the significance of

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each other’s religions – ideas of ideas of magic and miracles, concepts of sacrifice and good works.

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Really, they were, in some ways, very similar religions. The Spanish power and technology gave them the upper hand in physical combat,

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which in turn, allowed the Spanish to impose harsh penalties and punishments to enforce the adoption of Christianity. This was particularly true as

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Landa sought to wipe out any possible human sacrifice. Motivated by trying to save those

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sacrificial victims, he sought to locate any ritualistic sacrifice, free the victims

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whenever possible, and smash the idols and destroy the books that recorded the prayers and reasons

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for such sacrifices. Each book was called a codex, and a set the Codices.

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Eventually, Landa came to a conclusion and was determined to see it out: the only true way to

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strike out the continued practice of worship, prayers, and rituals of sacrifice was to destroy

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all evidence of them. This idea led to the collection of as many codices and cult images

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as could be found. Well over 5,000 codices were discovered and hauled to the center of

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the town in the province of Maní. There, Landa commanded the help of all those present to build

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a large building-sized bonfire. He then proceeded to burn 5,000 more objects, one after another,

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in an attempt to root out what he viewed as Satanism.

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On that day, so much was lost: the steps of the rituals, the meaning of important customs,

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the history of Maya growth, the documented challenges facing the Mayan people, and the miracles

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that occurred after rituals had been performed correctly. History. Culture. Life.

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In addition to burning all evidence and records of religious ritual, he wanted to destroy

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any memory or familiarity with those things. Drawing from hundreds of years of Inquisition,

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he began practicing an intense interrogation in which a person’s arm would be bound by

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a rope that pulled their entire body in the air, eventually dislocating their shoulders.

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Under such excruciating pain, they would be asked over and over again to reveal the true

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nature of their faith. If they resisted, stones were added to their ankles to pull harder

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on their shoulders. At the same time, they were beaten and whipped. The torture was intense

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and designed to eliminate any willingness to follow the Mayan "Old Ways" over the newer

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embrace of Christian beliefs. The hope was that the combination of force and burning

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all records would essentially eliminate the ritual and beliefs from the cultural mindset

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of the Mayan people. A more realistic consequence of this torture was false confession. The longer people twirled

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in the air from ropes digging into their skin and dislocating their shoulders, the more

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likely they were to confess to wild, exaggerated untruths. The use of torture on the Mayan people

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would later bring Diego de Landa to trial back in Spain – a similar fate which met

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Christopher Columbus, both for their criminal acts against the people they that found in the

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Americas. At Landa’s trial, we learned so more about the claims given under torture that never quite

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bore out in fact. Human sacrifice was indeed a part of the Mayan religious rituals. Interestingly,

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such sacrificed victims were actually crucified before having their hearts cut out and eaten

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or burnt – interesting to me because Spaniards viewed Crucifixion as a holy death because of Jesus Christ.

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The morality of religious behavior, tradition, or ritual does not really interest me here. I'm a historian,

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I'm not here to judge the past or value one over another. For me, I am more interested in the consequence of this religious conflict. As Diego de Landa

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saw evidence of sacrifice, he sought to gather as many cultural artifacts as possible and

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destroy them all. Such destruction feels sacrilegious to me! The loss of Mayan ideals, that loss of culture,

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the loss of history - it's something we cannot dismiss in the annals of History. A once great and

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long-lasting civilization that shaped the majority of the Americas, it grew quiet on that day when so many pieces of their cultural artifacts

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were destroyed. Indeed today, only 3 codices remain intact today, subject to endless study as you can imagine, standing

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testament to what thousands and thousands of other records could have revealed.

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And there you have it: the story of conquest and the power of historical records. Which

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brings us to modern day. Civilizations required three primary actors to ensure the long-term survival

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to future generations: first, someone to write those stories; second, using a language that future generations

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will be able to read; and third, in a medium that survives time. And sadly, for our own time period today,

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we are not fulfilling those three elements.

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We record the overall majority of our modern records in coding languages and store them

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on hardware that becomes obsolete within decades, if not years. We have all had that moment

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of data loss, gone forever, due to some minor circuit error or we forgot to back up our laptops or something happened. Imagine that devastating loss on a global

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scale. Our cultural values are stored purely online. Losing the internet would mean losing

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most records of all. Imagine trying to access all human knowledge without access

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to the computer or understanding coding languages. The truth is, we're preparing for our own historical

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times to be a dark ages of lost information. Unless we take action soon, our stories will

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be lost forever due to chance.

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So, perhaps this story will enable you to take the story of the Maya Codices and the destruction

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inflicted by the Spanish seriously for our own lives today. I hope you have enjoyed this episode

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of Footnoting History. I have been your host, Lesley, and let’s all think about how we all

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can document our times today for future generations!

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And, of course, the best stories are always in the footnotes.