The Black Legend Redux
there's a very weird form of soft genocide denial that floats around especially with academics. where it's not the bad thing didn't happen, sure it did, but just possibly maybe the bad thing was icing on already moldy cake. when the fact is the texts were violently burned, and the bulk of jon's post is wild speculation.
part of it is the spirit of the leyenda negra simply refusing to die. the black legend itself being spain excusing its own atrocities by crafting the biggest whataboutism in european historicism by claiming it was all made up by the french and british to shit on them. but it's compounded by the soft bigotry of low expectations.
we can't know how much destruction of the mayan codices was due to mildew specifically because the spanish burned as many as they could find. so it really doesn't matter how many were in bad condition when they got there. russell's teapot is in play, it's an unfalsifiable claim.
it's especially galling the one example the op can offer is texts found in tombs. yes, books sealed and untouched, underground, tend to fall apart. that's true even of vellum and parchment. the problem is, this is about libraries where worn texts were recopied.
incidentally, it also shows a fair ignorance of the subject. much was recorded in ceramics not just huun-paper (more durable than papyrus to begin with, just sayin'). that's why imagery like that of diego de landa usually doesn't show him holding bound volumes but clay figures:
canny observers may notice this same "it was inevitable" gets deployed a lot when it comes to this kind of discussion, even when we're talking about contemporary cultures and destruction we can see in real time with our own eyes. since the day the word was invented, there will always be people who fault the victims for somehow failing to resist harder.
