PREFATORY NOTE.
The substance of the present pamphlet was presented as an address to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its meeting in January, 1882, and was printed in the Penn Monthly, March, 1882. As the subject is one quite new in the field of American archæology and linguistics, it is believed that a republication in the present form will be welcomed by students of these branches.
THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM.[5-*]
Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among the Mayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments which still remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliest missionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the New World, possessed a literature written in “letters and characters,” preserved in volumes neatly bound, the paper manufactured from the bark of a tree and sized with a durable white varnish.[5-†]
A few of these books still remain, preserved to us by accident in the great European libraries; but most of them were destroyed by the monks. Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, to traditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and the like. Hence, they were considered deleterious, and were burned wherever discovered.