the 1500s Mayan book of the Prophet Balam

Ethnohistory, 2014

This article examines the so-called First Chronicle of the Maya Books of Chilam Balam, a segment of shared content found in three of the native copybooks from northern Yucatán, including the Tizimin, the Chumayel, and the Maní, also known as the Códice Pérez. I reevaluate the chronology and historical content of the First Chronicle found in these books by examining the following: (1) the dates applied to the katun cycles (increments of roughly twenty-year periods) in light of recent archaeological finds from Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Champotón, and Mayapán; (2) Maya conventions of time as expressed in the katun chronicles; (3) the shared subject matter found in all three books; and (4) the internal structure and transcription conventions of the First Chronicle. This study suggests that the early chronicles may offer a larger measure of historical accuracy and reliability than is currently accepted.

The Smoking Mirror, 2020

After 54 years of polemics about the Codex Grolier, INAH, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico finally decided to undertake major scientific studies on this document to evaluate its authenticity. During 2017, several research teams analyzed the codex using both non-invasive and invasive methods to produce the largest scientific corpus of data ever created for any Mesoamerican codex to date. Here, I present the results of the tests undertaken by the Colors of History Project and Laboratory of the University of Colorado-Boulder. The presence of the pigment Maya Blue was confirmed; in addition, no modern inks or materials were found, and three more AMS C 14 dates placed the manufacture of the document in the Early Postclassic period. All of the material evidence rejects the idea that this document was a fabrication of the 20 th century; instead, the various studies support the authenticity of the Códice Maya de Mexico and place it as the oldest surviving book manufactured in the Americas.

Chapter II The rise of Hunac Ceel to power Chapter III. A prophecy for Katun 11 Ahau Chapter IV. The building of the mounds Chapter V. Memoranda concerning the history of Yucatan Chapter VI. Notes on the calendar Chapter VII. The armorial bearings of Yucatan Chapter VIII. Notes on astronomy Chapter IX. The interrogation of the chiefs Chapter X. The creation of the world Chapter X1. The rituals of the angels Chapter XII. A song of the Itzá Chapter XIII. The creation of the uinal Chapter XIV. A history of the Spanish Conquest Chapter XV. The prophecy of Chilam Balam and the story of Antonio Martinez Chapter XVI. A chapter of questions and answers Chapter XVII. An incantation Chapter XVIII. A series of katun-prophecies Chapter XIX. The first chronicle Chapter XX. The second chronicle Chapter XXI. The third chronicle Chapter XXII. A book of katun-prophecies 1. Frontispiece 2. Historical introduction to the katun-prophecies 3. The katun-prophecies Chapter XXIII. The last judgment Chapter XXIV. Prophecies of a new religion Appendix A. The four world-quarters Appendix B. The sacrificial cenote at Chichen Itzá Appendix C. The Hunac Ceel episode Appendix D. The Maya prophecies Appendix E. Traditions of caste and chieftainship among the Maya Appendix F. Toltec military orders in Yucatan Appendix G. The Americanization of Christianity Appendix H. Chronological summary Bibliography 4. The drum and rattle of the katun resound. Fresco at Santa Rita, British Honduras. (After Gann.) 5. The Maya months, or uinals. (Chumayel MS.) 6. The armorial bearings of Yucatan. (Chumayel MS.) 7. Diagram showing the course of the sun in the heavens. (Chumayel MS.) 8. Diagram representing an eclipse of the sun. (Chumayel MS.) 9. Diagram explaining the cause of solar and lunar eclipses. (Chumayel MS.) 10. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 11. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 12. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 13. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 14. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 15. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 16. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 17. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 18. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 19. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 20. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 21. "The chiefs of the towns shall be seized because they are lacking in understanding." (Chumayel MS.) 22. The examining head-chief, or halach-uinic. (Chumayel MS.) 23. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 24. Lahun Chaan, associated with the planet Venus. (Dresden Codex, p. 47) 25. The names and symbols of God. (Chumayel MS.) 26. Death is. ruler over all. (Chumayel MS.) 27. A map of northern Yucatan. (Chumayel MS.) 28. The katun wheel. (Chumayel MS.) 29. The lords of the thirteen katuns. (Chumayel MS.) 30. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 31. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 32. The seven planets. (Chumayel MS.) 33. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 34. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 35. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 36. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 37. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 38. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 39. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 40. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 41. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 42. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 43. The lord of the katun. (Chumayel MS.) 44. Human sacrifice scene. Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itzá. (Restored by Ann Axtell Morris.) 45. Typical Itzá priest. Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itzá. (Drawing by Ann Axtell Morris.) 46. Typical Itzá sorcerer. Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itzá. (Drawing by Ann Axtell Morris.) 47. Temple of the Warriors frescos: a, coyote-fox; b, eagle. (After Ann Axtell Morris.) 48. Jaguar. Relief-carving at Chichen Itzá

Alejandra Moreno Toscano y Baltazar Brito Guadarrama (coords.), Códice Maya de México. Almanaque de Venus. Facsimilar impreso en amate elaborado por artesanos indígenas otomíes de San Pablito Pahuatlán, Puebla, 2021

This paper explains the historical and cultural context where the Códice Maya de México, before Grolier, was produced, which is the oldest readable book in America: dated by radiocarbon between 1159 and 1261 AD, but whose Venus table records phenomena between 1129 and 1233. En este trabajo se explica el contexto histórico y cultural donde se produjo el Códice Maya de México, antes Grolier, que es el libro legible más antiguo de América: datado por radiocarbono entre 1159 y 1261 d.C., pero cuya tabla de Venus registra fenómenos entre 1129 y 1233.

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2012

In eighteenth-century Yucatán a Maya scribe made a copy of a document called u kahlay cab tii kinil, a phrase that Timothy Knowkon translates as "the world history of the era" (p. i). The scribe's copy ran to about ten folios and is today preserved in the larger colonial-era manuscript known to us as The Book ofChilam Balam of Chumayel. This "world history" must once have been recorded in hieroglyphic script. But as a result of the destructive hostility of Spanish church officials toward such script, it was written down in alphabetic Yucatec Maya in the early colonial period (Knbwlton persuasively argues that it was first done in the late seventeenth century). The subject of the document is the creation of the world, the origins of humanity, the gods, tbe calendar, and the rituals that must mark the passing of time and the world's recreation ; in short, as Knowlton's book is titled, Maya Creation Myths. To say that Knowlton's book is a dissertation-based monograph on a ten-folio passage from an esoteric colonial Maya manuscript would be both accurate and misleading. For it is certainly that-in tbe course of two hundred pages he carefully presents and analyzes his own Maya transcriptions and English translations of the creation myth passage-but it is also much more than that. Every segment and subject of the document is placed within the relevant historical and literary contexts, Maya and Spanish. Two chapters explore the contexts of Maya cosmogony, primarily before contact, and the turmoil of colonial-era culture conflict. Four chapters explore well-focused aspects of the Chumayel mythography. For example, one chapter explains how a passage on "the birth of tbe tdnal" (or the 20-day Maya week) is an elegant case ofsyncrisis ("tbe juxtaposition of various points of view on a single object," p. 154), with the origins of the narrative attributed botb to tbe Old Testament's Melchizedek and to an enigmatic ancient Maya priest named Na Puc Tun. Within the "dialogized" language of tbe text, there is even an invented colonial Maya hieroglyph, a dialogized sign: the Western astronomical ideogram for "Sun" converted into a Maya logogram for "day." Knowlton calls the Cbilam Balam passages that are tbe book's subject "colonial creation myths, neither precise replicas of pre-Hispanic belief nor confused compromises Hispanic American Historical Review 91:4

the last Genesis Apocryphon, AD 1222 A dozen other Genesis books have been written.

Ethnohistory, 2011

Science, 2006

A block with a hitherto unknown system of writing has been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico. Stylistic and other dating of the block places it in the early first millennium before the common era, the oldest writing in the New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal development to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica.