More systematically, all over Central America, vast repositories of knowledge accumulated since ancient times were painstakingly gathered, heaped up and burned by zealous friars. In July 1562, for example, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in Yucatan Province) Fr Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He also destroyed countless ‘idols’ and ‘altars’, all of which he described as ‘works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity
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