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The authenticity of the Grolier Codex, a controversial Mayan document, has been verified by researchers:
The study, Houston said, "is a confirmation that the manuscript, counter to some claims, is quite real. The manuscript was sitting unremarked in a basement of the National Museum in Mexico City, and its history is cloaked in great drama. It was found in a cave in Mexico, and a wealthy Mexican collector, Josué Sáenz, had sent it abroad before its eventual return to the Mexican authorities."
For years, academics and specialists have argued about the legitimacy of the Grolier Codex, a legacy the authors trace in the paper. Some asserted that it must have been a forgery, speculating that modern forgers had enough knowledge of Maya writing and materials to create a fake codex at the time the Grolier came to light. The codex was reportedly found in the cave with a cache of six other items, including a small wooden mask and a sacrificial knife with a handle shaped like a clenched fist, the authors write. They add that although all the objects found with the codex have been proven authentic, the fact that looters, rather than archeologists, found the artifacts made specialists in the field reluctant to accept that the document was genuine.
[...] Houston and his co-authors analyzed the origins of the manuscript, the nature of its style and iconography, the nature and meaning of its Venus tables, scientific data — including carbon dating — of the manuscript, and the craftsmanship of the codex, from the way the paper was made to the known practices of Maya painters. Over the course of a 50-page analysis, the authors take up the questions and criticisms leveled by scholars over the last 45 years and describes how the Grolier Codex differs from the three other known ancient Maya manuscripts but nonetheless joins their ranks.
The Grolier's composition, from its 13th-century amatl paper, to the thin red sketch lines underlying the paintings and the Maya blue pigments used in them, are fully persuasive, the authors assert. Houston and his coauthors outline what a 20th century forger would have had to know or guess to create the Grolier, and the list is prohibitive: he or she would have to intuit the existence of and then perfectly render deities that had not been discovered in 1964, when any modern forgery would have to have been completed; correctly guess how to create Maya blue, which was not synthesized in a laboratory until Mexican conservation scientists did so in the 1980s; and have a wealth and range of resources at their fingertips that would, in some cases, require knowledge unavailable until recently.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 08 2016, @10:44AM
That quote quite covers anything created by citizens of the United States of America, but this article is about a book created by Pre-Columbian Mayans. As such, it equals the antiquity of European, Middle Eastern, or other older civilizations.
There is a great imbalance to the due given to, say, the Egyptians and that given to the Maya, Incas, or many other Pre-Columbian civilizations despite the similar sophistication and organization of the latter. It's too bad, because there is a wealth there that all but a few in the world have ever even heard about. The Mississippian Culture, for example, were a mound-building culture that stretched from Florida to Wisconsin, with extensive trading networks that spanned the continent and trafficked in everything from Mayan jade to copper from the Upper Penninsula of Michigan; their cities took as much engineering and sophistication to construct as the Great Pyramid. And that's not all--they were the third such culture to arise in North America, having been preceded by the Hopewell and Adena Cultures.
I only stumbled upon awareness of them as an adult, having never heard a peep in my entire academic career from Kindergarten through graduate school. Again, it's too bad, because it means the world is much more interesting than the accepted narratives would have us believe; and it means our future could be much more open and free than the tedious, narrow teleology that historical orthodoxy would bind us to. That is, if control of the past confers control of the future, then breaking the mold the past has been crammed into is a prerequisite to imagining different futures.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by ledow on Thursday September 08 2016, @12:34PM
It drives me insane, but again if it's not "American", it doesn't exist. That includes their own history, land and peoples. Natives were in America when Columbus landed. Nobody cares about them either. Vikings were on that land before that too.
"from its 13th-century amatl paper"
I passed several still-standing, still-in-use 13th Century churches in France the other week. Some of them have books from the time. A book that old is really NOTHING to the non-US people out there.
Salisbury Cathedral has a clock-tower that old. And I can't even be bothered to search for others, those are just off the top of my head.
This isn't "ancient". It's medieval.
Ancient is, say, Stonehenge at 5000 years old. Literally "Pre-historic", i.e. before recorded history.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 08 2016, @01:58PM
There are ancient sites by that definition, too. The Adena Culture [wikipedia.org] built many. If you check the Miamisburg Mound entry at the bottom of that Wikipedia article, it says, "it is an Ohio historical site and serves as a popular attraction and picnic destination for area families. Visitors can climb to the top of the mound, via stone-masonry steps." Can you imagine the same thing being said of Stonehenge, that it's no more than a popular picnic destination for area families? "Yeah, um, my kids like to play handball on the stones..."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:01PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:25PM
Wait, are we still talking about the prehistoric site with stone obelisks, or the classic song by Spinal Tap?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Thursday September 08 2016, @07:39PM
But still, one gets to run up and down a couple of famous mounds.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 08 2016, @09:28PM
True story: While studying at a Mandarin immersion course in Beijing the program offered us an optional trip to Qufu, Confucius's hometown. It was a loooong bus ride from Beijing, and along the way we stopped at a restaurant the bus driver had a kickback deal going with. As happens every third meal in China, you get Manchu's Revenge afterward. Arriving in Qufu I gritted my teeth through the reproduction Confucian temple, the reproduction classical dances by people in period costume, the endless stalls of people trying to sell you fake jade trinkets.
By the time we arrived at the forest preserve where Confucius is buried, I was bursting. There was no obvious bathroom, no sign anywhere indicating bathrooms. Nobody who worked there knew anything about bathrooms. To make matters worse, there were no bushes, because they had conveniently ripped all undergrowth out to leave hundreds of solemn, straight pine trees. I walked briskly a long way out into those pine trees, hoping enough distance would screen my from view.
Eventually I found a convenient grassy hill and did my business. Then I walked over the top of the hill in the other direction from whence I had come, and was suddenly staring at ten thousand people who were staring at me. I saw a stone marker at the base of the hill whose characters read, "Confucius." Thinking quickly I nonchalantly sauntered down the hill, hammed it up with the visiting Chinese, leaned in for a couple of family photos, and played it like nothing had happened.
I can't imagine what they would have done to me if they had known that in fact I had just had explosive diarrhea all over the tomb of their revered philosopher and historical figure, Confucius.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Thursday September 08 2016, @11:29PM
Oh god, I've been there. At least just on the side with the markers. Interesting description of the site but I like the story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:01PM
-1 Sweeping Generalizations
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:10PM
Considering the destruction of Mayan artifacts by the Spanish this is a significant find.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @07:22PM
That's why there's all this "old" stuff, like clocktowers and such in Europe, it doesn't exist elsewhere because those ancient and civilized Europeans destroyed what wasn't their culture. They couldn't destroy the pyramids, so they just tried to haul as much of it as they could back to Europe.
Now we get these dumbass Eurotards looking down on everything that isn't "theirs" with these nice condescending remarks.
Personally, I think it is funny when a Eurotard calls something "old" when it means LITERALLY NOTHING to what you find in Asia. You know, that part of the world that they couldn't conquer.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 08 2016, @05:28PM
You can't acknowledge that there were civilized people before you, if your goal is to sweep through the place claiming that everything you see is yours, in the name of your god.
If there is something still there, see how easily you can call it heretical and destroy it, or make it illegal to go to, or take it home as a trophy, leaving next to nothing locally to support your "see? nothing! Mine!" argument.
Europeans did that in many places around the world. ISIS had some good teachers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @11:44PM
You can't acknowledge that there were civilized people before you, if your goal is to sweep through the place claiming that everything you see is yours, in the name of your god.
But of course! [izquotes.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jelizondo on Thursday September 08 2016, @11:14PM
I forgot where I got the following, so [citation needed].
An American company was negotiating a contract with a Swedish company and demanded warranties that the Swedish company would not go out of business the following year. In a laconic letter the Swedes replied that the company had been in existence four times the age of the United States and saw no reason why they would go out of business soon.
On the 350th anniversary of Harvard University, on a conference, one of the professors expressed how intimately Harvard is tied to the history and culture of the U.S., “[this country] being an innovation we have observed with interest since its inception.”
There exist at least 26 institutions that have operated without interruption for at least 500 years: the Westminster Parliament, the Althing (parliament) of Iceland, the Catholic Church and 23 universities.
In one of the Oxford colleges, the council was discussing how to best invest their funds. The consensus was to buy land, which had proven safe and beneficial for the last thousand years. And old professor, chimed: “It’s true, it’s true. But of course, the last thousand years have been atypical.”