The ancient Mayas were the sole occupants of a portion of Central America, and the most civilized of any of the ancient inhabitants of that country. They lived there during the period that the Book of Mormon claims to be the prosperous period of the Nephites. In addition to their stone and stucco records they had a written language, and had many books. Short, Antiquities, p. 420, says, "In addition to these stone and stucco records, the Mayas had books, which Bishop Landa (a Catholic Bishop of 300 years ago), describes as written on a leaf doubled in folds, and enclosed between two boards, which they ornamented. They wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the folds. The paper they made from the roots of trees and coated with a white varnish on which one could write well. Bishop Landa confesses to having burned a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil . . . Three of the Maya manuscripts are known to have escaped the vandalism of the early fathers."
One of these Maya books, called the Troano manuscript, is described by Bancroft, as quoted by Short, p. 422. He says: "The original is written on a strip of Maguey paper about fourteen feet long and nine inches wide, the surface of which is covered with a whitish varnish, on which the figures are painted in black, red, blue and brown. It is folded fan like in thirty-five folds presenting when shut much the appearance of a modern large octavo volume. The hieroglyphics cover both sides the paper, and the writing is consequently divided into seventy columns, each about five by nine inches, having been apparently executed after it was folded, so that the folding does not interfere with the written matter . . . The regular lines
