This is perhaps the worst single act of superstition and falsehood in recorded history. We are only today beginning to understand what was lost, but that's with significant detective work, expert analysis lasting years, fighting poachers, and ultimately a great deal of inference and guesswork.
The Mayans were the premier scientists of the 16th Century, not just in the Western Hemisphere but all around the globe. Most of the books destroyed were invaluable and irreplaceable, as we know from the few that escaped destruction and reference those no longer available. With the recent improvements in LIDAR and drones, we're discovering that Mayan cities were probably an order of magnitude larger than we believed. The Mayan cities of El Pilar and Caracol may well have been the two largest cities in the world in 1562, each at least 45% larger than third-place Beijing.
This is perhaps the worst single act of superstition and falsehood in recorded history. We are only today beginning to understand what was lost, but that's with significant detective work, expert analysis lasting years, fighting poachers, and ultimately a great deal of inference and guesswork.
The Mayans were the premier scientists of the 16th Century, not just in the Western Hemisphere but all around the globe. Most of the books destroyed were invaluable and irreplaceable, as we know from the few that escaped destruction and reference those no longer available. With the recent improvements in LIDAR and drones, we're discovering that Mayan cities were probably an order of magnitude larger than we believed. The Mayan cities of El Pilar and Caracol may well have been the two largest cities in the world in 1562, each at least 45% larger than third-place Beijing.
You put this is perspective that is even more terrible.