Of all the geographical classifications of the indigenous cultures of America that inhabited the continent, only the region called Mesoamerica had, from very early in its history, the use of letters to transmit messages. It is known that the Inca cultures and perhaps some of those that preceded them used a system to memorize stories, but such systems never used signs with values, whether they were logographic or phonetic. This uniqueness places the Mesoamerican area on a par with the cultures of the old continent and Asia, concerning the transmission of the historical memory of its peoples.

All writing is an information storage system. Indeed, long before writing was invented, human memory existed, and often specific groups of people were trained to ensure the community safeguarding their past. However, there is a significant difference between the transmission of information in written form, that is, utilizing sculpted or painted drawings or signs, and that is, therefore, more efficient and easier to save than that which depends only on the memory and oral transmission.