Aztec glyphs aren't terribly complex - at least not on the surface. New work shows they're richer than people thought.
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In 1521, the Spanish military presided over the destruction of three of the world's greatest libraries – in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and in the Aztec-allied cities of Tetzcoco and Tlacopan.
Of the thousands of books of Aztec poetry, law, rhetoric, medicine, astronomy and history, only one or two works appear to have survived.
So comprehensive was the Spanish obliteration of the Aztec intellectual and literary achievement that much of the modern academic world became convinced that that achievement had never really existed.
Key to that perception was the belief that Aztec hieroglyphic signs did not constitute a proper writing system and that therefore a complex written literary tradition could not have existed.
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