Warfare Reasons

Within 50 years of the Spanish invasion, the Mayans had lost 90% of their population. When the Spanish came and witnessed the Mayan lifestyle, they were revolted. Their rituals of elongated heads and sacrificing they thought to be the work of the devil, so they forcibly tried to convert them to Christianity, destroying almost all of their written records (also believed to be possessions of the devil) and had massive book burnings. Had those records not been destroyed, we would have a much better understanding of their astronomy, calendar, and ideology. Some Spanish priests, seeing the wrong in these book burnings, managed to salvage just 4 codices (the ones I mentioned before, now in Europe). These codices were written on thin sheets of paper (22 ft long) from the inner bark of fig trees, covered with lined paint, then folded like an accordion. When the Dresden Codex was finally translated, it unleashed the Mayan views of the universe and future. They had made predictions such as eclipses, lunar cycles, and the cycle of the planet Venus for thousands of years to come. The last page held a picture of the destruction of the earth by flood.

Anyway, I can't imagine what the Mayans must have been forced to go through. Watching their ancestors books burn before their eyes, hundreds upon hundreds of years of work, must've been horrible. I'm sure this broke the spirit for many Mayans. After all, this is what they lived on.