Thursday, September 11, 2025

Chemical tests prove Mayan codex not a fake, say INAH researchers

An almost 1,000-year-old Mayan codex is the real deal, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced yesterday, dispelling long-held doubts over the pictographic text’s authenticity 54 years after it was sold by looters.

An expert team made up of historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and scientists among others, judged the codex authentic and said that the calendar-style text is the oldest known legible pre-Hispanic document.

It is estimated to have been made between 1021 and 1154 AD.

The codex was bought by Mexican collector Josúe Sáenz in 1964 and first exhibited in 1971 at the Grolier Club in New York, which led it to becoming known as the Grolier Codex.

Sáenz returned the codex, which contains a series of predictions and observations related to the astral movement of Venus, to Mexican authorities in 1974.

The authenticity of the tree-bark folding “book,” which will now be known as the Mexico Maya Codex, had been doubted due to the fact that it was looted and because its design was simpler than other surviving pre-Hispanic texts.

In a statement issued yesterday, INAH said the codex’s “austerity” was due to the time in which it was written, predating other works that have been found.

Chemical tests proved the authenticity both of the pages and the pre-Hispanic inks used to write it, the institute said.

Prior to its discovery, the codex spent hundreds of years in a cave in Chiapas, during which time as many as 10 pages may have been lost, INAH explained.

The expert judgement ends decades of speculation about the document’s authenticity.

“For a long time, critics of the codex said the style wasn’t Mayan and that it was ‘the ugliest’ of them in terms of figures and color,” said INAH researcher Sofía Martínez del Campo.

“But the austerity of the work is explained by its epoch; when things are scarce one uses what one has at hand.”

The full results of the expert team’s analysis of the codex are being discussed at a symposium currently taking place at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

Mayan texts are written using syllabic glyphs, a form of writing that has been compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs in which stylized painted figures represent a syllable.

Source: Milenio (sp), Associated Press (en)

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
Navy sailors stand guard next to packages of cocaine, displayed between two navy ships

Navy seizes 1,600 kilos of cocaine off the coast of Guerrero

0
More than 48 metric tons of cocaine have now been confiscated since President Sheinbaum took office last October, authorities say.
Steering wheel of a BYD brand chinese electric car

Facing US pressure, Mexico to raise tariffs on Chinese cars to 50%

0
Mexico will increase the tariff on Chinese cars to the maximum level permitted by the World Trade Organization, Economy Minister Ebrard said Wednesday.
luz del mundo church with poster of Naason Joaquín García

Family of Naasón Joaquín García, leader of La Luz del Mundo, charged with sex trafficking

0
Joaquín, his mother and his nephew are charged with running "a wide-ranging racketeering and child exploitation enterprise" that preyed on young members of the La Luz del Mundo Church over many years.
BETA Version - Powered by Perplexity