3. The Spanish Conquest of the Americas
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas, their religious fervor led to the systematic destruction of Aztec and Maya codices and artifacts. Priests and soldiers alike burned thousands of illustrated manuscripts, erasing intricate records of astronomy, mathematics, and history.
This cultural devastation meant that only a handful of original Maya codices survived, while entire civilizations’ wisdom was lost forever. The legacy of this loss still hampers our understanding of pre-Columbian societies. More on the fate of the Maya codices
