Yucatan Before and After the Conquest by Diego De Landa

Yucatan Before and After the Conquest by Diego De Landa

These people also used certain characters or letters, with which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences. We found a great number of books in these letters and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.
So writes Friar Diego de Landa in his Relacion De las cosas de Yucatan of 1566, the basic book in Maya studies. Landa did all he could to wipe out Maya culture and civilization. In the famous auto da fe of July 1562 at Mani, as he tells us, he destroyed 5,000 idols and burned 27 hieroglyphic rolls. And yet paradoxically Landa's book, written in Spain to defend himself against charges of despotic mismanagement, is the only significant account of Yucatan done in the early post-Conquest era. As the distinguished Maya scholar William Gates states in his introduction, ninety-nine percent of what we today know of the Mayas, we know as the result either of what Landa has told us in the pages that follow, or have learned in the use and study of what he told. Yucatan Before and After the Conquest is the first English translation of this very important work.
Landa's book gives us a full account of Maya customs, daily activities, history, ceremonial festivals, and the many social and communal functions in which their life was expressed. Included here are the geography and natural history of Yucatan, the history of the Conquest, indigenous architecture and other aspects of Maya civilization (sciences, books, religion, etc.), native historical traditions, the Inquisition instituted by the Spanish clergy, Maya clothing, food, commerce, agriculture, human sacrifices, calendrical lore, and much more.

Diego de Landa (Cifuentes, 1524-Yucatan, 1579). Espana. Ingreso en al monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes de Toledo a los diecisiete anos y fue uno de los primeros frailes franciscanos que viajo a Yucatan para evangelizar a los mayas. Durante su primera etapa en el Nuevo mundo incinero numerosos documentos de la antigua civilizacion maya. Tuvo que responder ante sus superiores de algunos desafueros.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780486236223
ISBN 10	0486236226
Title	Yucatan Before and After the Conquest
Author	Diego De Landa
Series	Native American
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dover Publications Inc.
Year published	2003-03-28
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.