“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, beginning around 1524, when Pedro de Alvarado attacked the Maya with a huge army of native allies from Tlaxcala and Cholula. But there were many Mayan kingdoms that took a long time to be conquered. The last few fell in 1697, more than a hundred fifty years later.”
Remi said, “So what we found was a high-ranking man who picked up a pot from somewhere near Copan 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 Tacana 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 spinning out of control and destroying itself like an unbalanced machine. By 1537, this man’s universe had been showing signs of coming apart for hundreds of years. There had been terrible droughts from 750 to 900 A.D., a series of wars between cities, disease. And then the Spaniards came. Their arrival in 1524 was like the landing of aliens in a horror movie. They carried weapons nobody could fight or make for themselves. They were bent on destroying what remained of Mayan civilization and killing or enslaving every Mayan person. It was the final curse after a long series of curses. A Mayan — and this was a person of the royal class — would have taken the long view. These are people whose calendar was divided into cycles 5,125 years long. He might have believed that the book he was saving contained information essential to keeping the world intact or rebuilding it in the future.”
“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
“I am S. I. Wondrash,” she said. “But the
“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
“We all do,” said Caine. “The Spanish burned thousands of
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.
“This is amazing,” Caine said. “The page is a kind of stylized map, a set of directions. It says it leads from Copan to the Motagua River Valley, which is in Guatemala. See this glyph? It’s
“Are those people with the baskets going to find jade?” asked Remi.
“More likely, to trade for it,” said Caine. “Yes, it’s trade. They’re bringing valuable jungle products — bird feathers, jaguar skins, coca — to trade for jade.”
Selma said, “Jadeite was the most valuable substance in the Americas. The only known sources are Burma, Russia, and the Motagua Valley. This appears to show where that is.”
Caine said, “After the Spanish came, the Mayans stopped going there and never told the Spanish where the jade came from. The Spanish wanted only gold and silver, so the location was forgotten. It was quite a mystery for a long time. Then, in 1952, a hurricane passed over the Motagua Valley, and chunks of jade the size of cars washed out of the hillsides.”
Sam said, “Then, until 1952, what we’re looking at would have been a secret?”
“Absolutely,” said Caine. “To the Mayans, a very important secret.”
“And this is only the first page,” said Remi.
As Caine turned the pages carefully, they stared in amazement. There were paintings of gods and heroes engaged in epic stories of creation and the end of eras. There was a factual account of the warfare between Tikal and Calakmul in which Copan backed Tikal. Caine deciphered and translated only enough of each set of glyphs to determine its subject.
After about thirty pages, Caine turned a page to see a partial picture. Since the book was folded like an accordion, he could unfold two pages, lay them flat, and unfold two more to make one four-page display. There were paintings of forests, lakes, mountains. And all over the display were tiny pictures of Mayan buildings.
Sam said, “It looks like a map.” He pointed at a shape jutting out into water. “That looks like the Yucatan Peninsula.”
There were some buildings on the page that looked bigger than the others. “What would that be?” asked Sam.
“The glyphs say that’s Chichen Itza,” said Caine. “This on the coast is Zama, the ancient name of Tulum. Down here is Altun Ha, so this section is Belize. Here in Guatemala is Tikal. There’s Palenque in Mexico.”
“Are these all places you know?” asked Remi.
“Quite a few of them are — Bonampak, Xlapak, Copan. But there are many more names here. There are a number that I’ve never seen before. The current estimate is that about sixty percent of Mayan cities are known and mapped — over a hundred of them. But this shows — what? At least three hundred of the large buildings that
