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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: 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.