The Dresden Codex is the most complete of the surviving Maya codices. On other pages dates and glyphs are listed that pertain to omens and augury. These pages also contain lists of numbers that allowed the Maya to predict lunar and solar eclipses, and phases of the moon, and the movements of Mars and Venus. The individual pages in the codices usually depict a deity and include a series of glyphs describing what that deity is doing. According to archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni, the codices were used to set dates for rituals, often linking them to astronomical events. The codices were probably written no earlier than the 12th-century AD, meaning they were written in the later years of the Maya, but it is possible that they were copied from much earlier books. Three of the codices are named according to the European cities in which they are kept: Dresden, Paris, and Madrid, and a possible fourth is still being reviewed for its authenticity. 55-59, 74) depicting eclipses, multiplication tables and the flood ( Public Domain )

Tulum: Maya City of the Dawning Sun, a Caribbean Paradise.Remarkable Secret Tombs of Maya Snake Kings Reveal Fascinating Story.Hidden in the Glyphs: Deciphering Bilingual Mayan-Olmec Text.The surviving Codices contain information about Maya astronomy, astrology, religion, and rituals. Written on long strips the codices were then folded up accordion style to be preserved. The Surviving Maya Codicesįor years it was thought that the codices were made from maguey (plant) fiber, but in 1910 it was discovered that they were actually made from the inner bark of fig trees. Today only three or four of these important documents remain but even these provide an invaluable insight into the Mayan world. However, scared that the content of these books might interfere with their mission, the mid 16th-century Franciscan missionaries from Spain destroyed almost all of these codices during their systematic conquest and colonization of South America. They even produced books called codices, some of which were reported to detail 800 years of their history. They were literate, had a complex language including pictograms, glyphs, and phonetic representations. The Maya were a powerful pre-Columbian civilization who thrived between AD 600 – AD 800.

Maya glyphs