The Mayan Secrets

“You said there were once thousands,” said Remi.

“Hundreds of thousands, is a better estimate,” he said. “But there were two problems. The codices were painted on a fabric made from the bark of a wild fig tree called Ficus glabrata. The fabric was folded into pages and the pages painted with a white mixture like stucco. That gave the Maya white pages they could write on. They were better than papyrus, almost as good as paper.”

“What were the problems?”

“One was the climate. Most of Mayan country was humid jungle. When books get wet, they rot. Some codices were buried in tombs — some at Copán, some at Altun Ha in Belize, some at Uaxactún Guytan. The fig-bark fabric rotted, leaving little piles of painted stucco fragments too small and delicate to ever be pieced together. But the biggest problem arrived in ships.”

“The Spanish conquest,” said Sam.

“Mainly the priests. They made a point of destroying anything having to do with native religions. Mayan gods looked like devils to them. They burned every book they found and then searched every hiding place so no book could survive. This went on from the begi

“And now five,” said Remi.

“It’s a spectacular find,” said Caine. “Do you have a place to put it where it will be safe?”

“We do,” said Sam. “We’ll lock it up tight.”

“Good. I’d like to get started on the dating process and then come back tomorrow to start examining the codex. Is that possible?”

“I’d say it’s mandatory,” said Sam. “We’re as curious as you are and we can’t satisfy our curiosity without you.”

Chapter 7

The next afternoon, Sam and Remi were waiting when David Caine arrived. After Sam and Remi took him into the climate-controlled room, Remi put on surgical gloves, opened one of the glass cabinets, and set the codex on the table. Caine sat for a moment, staring at the cover. “Before we begin,” he said, “the carbon dating is complete on the seeds and husks that were in the wooden bowls and on the wood itself. The samples all had 94.29 percent of their carbon 14. The wood and the plants died at about the same time, which is four hundred seventy-six years ago, in 1537.”

“Isn’t that sort of late for a classic Mayan?” asked Remi.

“It’s well into the end-time of the civilization. Most major classic cities had been abandoned by around 1000 A.D. Others stood until the Spanish got to them, begi

Remi said, “So what we found was a high-ranking man who picked up a pot from somewhere near Copán in Honduras. He put a book inside it and set off on foot. He went four hundred miles or so, then climbed all the way up the side of the Tacaná volcano in Mexico and put it in a shrine.”

“I would say it’s almost certain that something of that sort happened. Why he did it, we can only guess at this point.”

“Do you have a guess?” asked Sam.

“I think that he was taking an extremely precious book to a secret and remote place to hide it from the Spaniards. Judging from your photographs of the site, you’re probably right that it was a small stone shrine. Inside are pictures of Cizin, god of earthquakes and death, who was the bringer of earthquakes. He’s the dancing skeleton with the dangling eyeballs.”

“Then, what?”

“I’m just guessing, remember. At some point, the shrine was covered by a lava flow from the volcano. It’s even possible that he intentionally placed the book in the shrine, knowing the likelihood that it would be covered by lava, believing that a god was giving him a perfect way to seal the book in a safe place.”

“Do you think he would do that?”

Caine shrugged. “The Mayans had a strong belief in an afterlife in which they would be rewarded or punished. They also believed that the universe was kept in balance by what they did. Much of the knowledge they accumulated in books about astronomy and mathematics was intended to tell them what they should do to keep the universe from spi

“I suppose, then, he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself to save the book.”

Caine said, “Imagine that powerful, humanlike creatures arrived here in spaceships, killed or enslaved everyone they could find, and then began the process of finding every computer, every book, and burning it. Oops! There goes the history of art, and, after it, every painting. There goes calculus, algebra, even arithmetic. They’re burning the books of every religion — all Bibles, the Koran, the Talmud, everything. Did they forget philosophy? Nope, it’s all going into the fire. Every poem, every story, ever written? Up in smoke. Physics, chemistry, biology, medicine; the history of the Romans and Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians. All gone.”

“What a terrible, sad idea,” Remi said. “We’d be back in the stone age with no map for the way back here.”

“It also makes me even more curious about the codex,” said Sam. “What was it that our friend managed to save from the fires? What’s in here?”

Caine shrugged. “That’s what’s been keeping me awake for two days.”

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Sam called.

Selma entered. “Am I too late?”

“No,” said Remi. “Professor David Caine, this is Selma Wondrash, who is kind enough to work with us as our chief researcher. Whatever the subject is, if Selma doesn’t know the answer, she knows where it can be found.”

Caine stood and they shook hands. “Wondrash. It’s not a common name. Are you related to the S. I. Wondrash who helped catalog the Inca quipu?”

“I am S. I. Wondrash,” she said. “But the quipu project was a long time ago.”

“And there hasn’t been much progress in deciphering them since then,” said Caine. “The strings and knots the Incas used to keep track of things are still incomprehensible to us.”

“I keep hoping somebody will find an old Spanish document that records what an Inca informant said when he revealed how to interpret the different kinds and colors and lengths of strands in quipu.”

“We all do,” said Caine. “The Spanish burned thousands of quipu. There are only a few hundred left, but, thanks to you, we at least know what exists.”

Selma looked down at the codex on the table. “Meanwhile, we have this.”

“We do,” Caine said. “Is everyone ready?”

The others all nodded. Caine put on his gloves and carefully opened the first page to reveal a striking painting. Tiny Mayans moved across the page, carrying baskets. They were accompanied by warriors in full-feathered battle regalia, wearing quilted armor, carrying round shields and wooden clubs with obsidian chunks along the edges. They went through plants that seemed to signify jungles. In one place, they passed over what appeared to be mountains, then arrived at a river valley. There were columns of glyphs covering the top third of the page.