and the spanish conquest. archaeologist george stuart. stuart: this is a color facsimile of the dresden codex -- actual size, real colors. it's made on, like the others, on bark paper sized with lime plaster, on which the images were painted with fine hair brushes and pigment in about, oh, five or six different colors. keach: many of these books were discovered by the sixteenth century spanish. they were said to be filled with genealogies, prophesies and religious beliefs. but to the spanish conquerors, they were blasphemous. in 1562, bishop diego de landa ordered them destroyed. "we found a large number of books in these characters, "and as they contained nothing "in which there were not to be seen "superstition and lies of the devil, "we burned them all, "which caused them much affliction." ironically, a book by bishop landa himself proved crucial to the understanding of maya writing. stuart: and in it is everything that he observed in yucatan