Codex Selden sounds like it could be a character in the next “Star Wars” movie, but it’s actually a mysterious 500-year-old Mexican manuscript. Created for storytelling purposes, this manuscript was used by the Mixtec, an indigenous group from Mexico.
Unfortunately, many of the stories on the document were obscured by plaster, which historians couldn’t remove because of the potential damage it might cause. Thanks to advancements in technology, researchers have been able to electronically peel back a few layers to finally get a glimpse of what had previously been inaccessible. Here’s what they saw.
The top part of the image is what was visible to the naked eye, and the lower half is what computers were able to see:
Credit: Tlatollotl / Instagram
Like most things in the realm of research, answers only lead to more questions. And this case is no exception. Researchers still aren’t completely sure what it all means.
Credit: Native.Olmec / Instagram
The Mixtec language, much like Egyptian Hieroglyphics, is a pictogram-based language, which means there’s a lot of research that has to go into deciphering what was being said, and who is even represented by the drawings.
To get a sense of what historians are up against, think about it like this:
Credit: Tlatollotl / Instagram
I barely understand emojis now, and I use them all the time. I can’t imagine how it’ll be in 500 years when historians unearth an old smartphone and try to figure out just what in the damn hell we were talking about when we said, “poop poop eggplant kimoji”.
