The Maya writing system was used in what is now Mexico and Central America for almost two thousand years, until after the arrival of Cortés. It was written in bark paper books, carved on public monuments and inscribed on personal objects of pottery, bone and jade. The invading Spanish outlawed the script and burned thousands of books, systematically wiping out literacy in the Maya script and severing the Maya people from the written record of their own extraordinary past.

n the nineteenth century the texts began to re-emerge, as buried cities and fantastic inscriptions were discovered in the jungles and rare Maya books plundered by the Spanish were re-discovered in the libraries of Europe.  Early scholars decoded the complex Maya calendar and identified glyphs for gods, planets, animals, colors and directions. But prejudice and misconceptions about the nature of the Maya people and their script kept the meaning of the texts a mystery for over a century more.

Over the past few decades, a diverse group of epigraphers and historians, ethnographers and archaeologists, astronomers and linguists, artists and amateurs, have finally unlocked the secrets of the glyphs. Today over ninety percent of the script is understood.

For the six million modern day Maya, this recovered history, poetry and mythology is an extraordinary source of pride and identity. Maya students are now learning to read hieroglyphs, and parents who for centuries named their babies after Christian saints are now naming their children after ancient Maya kings.

Destruction started with Spanish Inquisition, Catholic priest Diego de Landa, destroyed Mayan language and culture. 

This is only an example of  destructive power of church Intolerance Meme, idea of Jewish religion started few centuries before the birth of Jesus, and was continued by Christians in 3 rd and 4 th centuries AD. The Intolerance is based on same Islamic Principle as only Yahweh is god, and anyone who worships other gods is committing a sin and thus okay to murder and destruct temples. Although Christian continued their policy after 1 st world war with greed of money and visa to Europe and USA and thus converting Hindus and Muslims all over world, but their terrorist legacy is still carried by their brother Islamist. Remember there is no difference between IBRAHIM AND ABRAHAM. Their intolerance justifies atrocities in Yahweh’s name: Murder, slavery, forced conversion, suppression and destruction of other religions, racism, and many other immoral acts.

Now let us see the secularism. As in Modern India, where Hindus let all religions come, same foreign religion overtake and start destruction of same secular Hindus. Same story was repeated in Mayan era when Mayan incorporated Christian God in their Temples, in name of secularism, and started conversion machine ,of  Mayan “converts” who incorporated the Catholic Yahweh/Jesus/Spirit, along with the various saints and angels, into their own traditional religion,  he became furious and that resulted  in torture and death across the Yucatan region. He set goal to wipe out all knowledge of the Mayan religion and was successful. After Fifty years  in 1699, Spanish soldiers burned a town that had the last school of scribes who knew the Mayan hieroglyphs. By 1720, everything was finished, murdered, destroyed who knew Mayan language.

The Roman Catholic church’s response?  Diego de Landa’s crime was that he carried out an inquisition without authorization and was punished for house arrest for few years and then promoted to Bishop of Yucatan, same city he destroyed. Remember, he was not punished to destroy Mayan language, temples, murder , atrocities. That is what Roman church is.

After two hundred years, and an international team of linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, mathematicians, an architect, and one twelve-year-old child prodigy hieroglyphics expert, were able to restore left over and deciphered almost 90% of stone inscribed language.

You must watch excellent film, Breaking the Maya Code. You can also watch the shorter one-hour Nova version online, courtesy of PBS and WGBH Boston.

References-

Breaking the Maya Code

Dictionary of Mayan language
Maya Inscriptions

PBS.ORG -cracking maya code

Breaking Mayan Code