The MCM first appeared in a private collection in the 1960s and was shown at "The Maya Scribe and His World", an exhibition held at the Grolier Club in New York City in 1971, hence its original name.

In 2018, a team of scientists coordinated by the National Institute for Anthropology and History demonstrated conclusively that the document dates to the period between 1021 and 1154 CE.

At the airstrip he was shown the codex along with some other looted Maya artifacts and was told that he could take the items back to Mexico City for authentication before purchasing them.

[21] The MCM was subsequently published various times, by detractors (J. Eric S. Thompson,[22] Milbrath,[23] Baudez,[24] among them) and by proponents (Stuart, Carlson).

Although other scholars have argued for and against the codex, the arguments against the manuscript's authenticity became irrelevant in the face of Mexican scientific analysis.

[5][32] Furthermore, tiny arthropods took up residence in the MCM at some point, yielding crisply chewed edges that detractors of the manuscript misconstrued as scissor cuts.

[4] Despite subsequent publication of a critical review of Coe et al.’s arguments,[33] teams of scientists under the auspices of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History were preparing the studies that would declare the MCM to be authentic in 2018.

Although both front and back (recto and verso) of the MCM were prepared for painting, only one side was completed as a ritual manuscript.

Ring numbers across the upper margin link the days of the Venus cycle,[3] recorded in a hybrid system that incorporates both the bar-and-dot numeration of the Maya and the single dots used in Central Mexico and Oaxaca.

[3] The book would have served as a guide to precise knowledge in the hands of a Maya priest in the late 11th or early 12th century.

Page 5 features a version of a solar deity known from Dresden 55a, and as the face of an Early Postclassic Maya mask at the Art Institute of Chicago (1965.782); this sun god sets the temple in front of him afire with a dart launched from his atlatl.

The death deity has a jagged flint blade in his nasal cavity, similar to a depiction at the Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itza.

[4] Page 8 has been identified as a bird deity,[21] with some serpent qualities;[4] he wears a thick belt and tezcacuitlapilli over a hide skirt,[4] and he has shot the temple in front of him with a dart from his atlatl.

The radiocarbon date of the codex places it squarely in the Early Postclassic period, when both Tula and Chichen Itza were waning in power and when all of Mesoamerica was in decline.

The proportions of the human figures are similar to those known from Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic fine orange ceramics, typically with a ringstand support.

[39] The MCM was exhibited at the Museo Nacional de Antropología of Mexico City for three weeks in September and October 2018.