Scientists have been argue over the authenticity of an ancient papers called theGrolier Codexfor 50 years . Anew psychoanalysis publishedin a special section of the journal Maya Archaeology has concluded that the leaf-book is indeed genuine , making it the oldest surviving ms from the pre - Colombian epoch .
Perhaps you ’re not conversant with theGrolier Codex . It ’s the surviving pages of a 20 - page book , made of stucco - coated bark paper folded into an accordion anatomy . The pages are painted with distinctive Maya iconography — gods , warrior , slaves , and hieroglyphs , for case — and include a calendar chart the motion of the major planet Venus .
Legend has it that looters ransacking a cave in Mexico descend across the ill damaged Sir Frederick Handley Page in the sixties , along with a cobalt blue mask , a sacrificial knife , and some blank pieces of fig - barque paper . That ’s accord to a Mexican accumulator advert Josue Saenz , who claimed he was contacted by the looter and taken by carpenter’s plane to a remote airstrip to collect the items — although at least one archeologist , Donna Yates , has called this account“fantastical . ”
Saenz ’s questionable account and subsequent actions cast uncertainty on the authenticity of the fragment from the start , even though the other artefact have since been shown to be genuine . Scientists tested the leaf-book in 2007 , but could n’t resolutely settle the issue of its authenticity , partially because while many of the materials used were pre - Colombian , some of the wearable and tear in the pages seemed stilted . It was potential a talented forger may have used material from the right period to give off archaeologists . And carbon 14 dating revealed the blank pages of bark paper found with the codex pegged them to around 1230 AD .
“ It became a kind of dogma that this was a fake , ” co - source Stephen Houston of Brown Universitysaid in a statement . “ We determine to return and look at it very cautiously , to check criticism one at a meter . Now we are issuing a definitive facsimile of the book . There ca n’t be the slightest doubt that the Grolier is real . ”
Along with Harvard University ’s Michael Coe , and Mary Miller and Karl Taube of the University of California , Riverside , Houston reviewed all the know inquiry on the codex .
That included measure the manuscript ’s origins , the carbon dating results , the various deity depicted , how the bark report was made , the Maya blue pigment , and thin red study lines underneath the painting , among other expression . The team concluded that a forger in the 1960s simply could not have bed all the details required to make such a counterfeit . Many of the deity express in the leaf-book had n’t even been discovered then , for example , and scientists did n’t successfully make Maya blue in the lab until the 1980s .
There are three other known ( authenticated ) ancient Maya manuscript , known as the Dresden , Madrid , and Paris Codices , in summation to the Grolier Codex . There are variations among them , but all admit astronomical calendars track the movements of heavenly heavenly consistency . And radiocarbon dating shows the Grolier predate the other three .
“ A reasoned deliberation of grounds leave only one possible conclusion , ” the authors write . “ Four intact Mayan codex hold out from the Precolumbian period , and one of them is the Grolier . ”
[ Maya Archaeology ]
anthropologyArchaeologyScience
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