The Maya Codex of Mexico: authentication of the former Grolier Codex (INAH, 2018)

This is the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia's own 2018 authentication record for the Maya Codex of Mexico, formerly known as the Grolier Codex, published following non-destructive testing including particle induced X-ray emission analysis that confirmed pre-Hispanic gypsum, hematite pigment and carbon-based ink, and radiocarbon dating placing the manuscript between roughly 1021 and 1154 CE, making it the oldest known surviving book in the Americas. The codex's authenticity had been genuinely disputed for decades since its unusual 1960s emergence on the antiquities market. Its strength is that a national research institution's own material analysis, using methods a private owner could not have applied, is what finally settled a long running scholarly dispute. Its limit is that it is the institution's own official finding rather than an independent third party study, so a specific analytic claim should be checked against the underlying published test results INAH's finding rests on.