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Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

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Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#21

Post by baron816 »

wjnc wrote: post #16
52-6F-62 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my field of expertise, but why wouldn't we just run LIDAR scans of as much of the earth's surface as possible? Is it prohibitively expensive at this point? Is the computation [relatively] expensive? Is there a sound reason we don't race to do more? I get the feeling this kind of data could inspire generations of new archaeologists and historians. There are also some pseudo-archeological and pseudo-histori…

A few hints from the article: 810 sq miles mapped, a three year project and lidar flying by helicopter. Another giveaway is the search for MH370. In some dimensions Earth is still huge!

I wonder how much city life biases us to think the planet is smaller than it is. Perhaps it explains fears of overpopulation.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#22

Post by InclinedPlane »

mmjaa wrote: post #11
digi_owl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah i think we are heavily underestimating how quickly nature can retake cultivated land.

This is something that has always fascinated me - just how do the processes which cover a landscape with, say, layers and layers of sediment - or jungle cover - really work? I mean, I get it - you leave something out, a few weeks later its going to get covered in a layer of dust/sediment. But how is it that entire cities get buried under 10's of meters of dirt? I'm sure geologists have this all figured out, but it al…

It's not that complicated. Humans tend to build in flat areas. Flat areas tend to be flood plains. When flood plains flood they leave behind sediment. There are additional ways that sediment builds up such as airborne deposits and importantly from growing plants leaving behind biomatter, but in a lot of cases flooding explains the substantial depth of sediment deposited.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#23

Post by maxerickson »

wjnc wrote: post #16
52-6F-62 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my field of expertise, but why wouldn't we just run LIDAR scans of as much of the earth's surface as possible? Is it prohibitively expensive at this point? Is the computation [relatively] expensive? Is there a sound reason we don't race to do more? I get the feeling this kind of data could inspire generations of new archaeologists and historians. There are also some pseudo-archeological and pseudo-histori…

A few hints from the article: 810 sq miles mapped, a three year project and lidar flying by helicopter. Another giveaway is the search for MH370. In some dimensions Earth is still huge!

For scale, the Amazon jungle is a couple million square miles.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#24

Post by [deleted] »

baron816 wrote: post #21
wjnc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few hints from the article: 810 sq miles mapped, a three year project and lidar flying by helicopter. Another giveaway is the search for MH370. In some dimensions Earth is still huge!

I wonder how much city life biases us to think the planet is smaller than it is. Perhaps it explains fears of overpopulation.

[deleted]

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#25

Post by utefan001 »

The link below may be interesting to look at (or laugh at?) since the LDS church's famous book claims to be about 3 civilizations that lived somewhere in north,central or south america. As far as I understand, one or more LDS leaders years ago decided (for arguably valid reasons) that all of the Book of Mormon events occurred between 600 BC to about AD 400.

This has made it more difficult for the church to say "look, we were right!" when discoveries like this are made because the timeline in several cases doesn't align with 600 BC to AD 400.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mo...

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#26

Post by maxerickson »

edgarvaldes wrote: post #19
mmjaa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that has always fascinated me - just how do the processes which cover a landscape with, say, layers and layers of sediment - or jungle cover - really work? I mean, I get it - you leave something out, a few weeks later its going to get covered in a layer of dust/sediment. But how is it that entire cities get buried under 10's of meters of dirt? I'm sure geologists have this all figured out, but it al…

Yeah, same here. And some ancient cities and settlements have _layers_ below them[1]. How? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Historical_Troy_uncovered

Archaeologists have characterized various layers, the depth and thickness will vary.

So a layer there might just consist of evidence of some particular activity that one settlement engaged in that earlier and later ones did not.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#27

Post by vanderZwan »

danans wrote: post #6

Reminds me of the recent finding that the Amazon River basin was much more cultivated in the ancient past than was thought: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/its-now-...

Which in turn reminds me of Richard Feynman describing the Mayan Calendar in his famous lectures on quantum mechanics, as an example of how the Mayans understood how the planets moved by looking, that they even figured out a number of patterns and predictions, but that they still did not know why the planets moved as they did, his point being that current understanding of quantum mechanics is very similar to this[0].

At the end, he tangentially mentions that we only know about this calendar because it is described in one of the three surviving books of their culture, out of thousands[1]

> "Just imagine our civilization reduced to three books, just the particular ones left by accident, which ones... So eh.. anyway, I get off the subject..."

The genocide of Native Americans is of course horrible by itself, but somehow this remark made me realize what "genocide" means beyond people being killed en masse. So much culture and knowledge was lost.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdZMXWmlp9g&t=25m28s

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdZMXWmlp9g&t=32m26s

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#28

Post by mholt »

utefan001 wrote: post #25

The link below may be interesting to look at (or laugh at?) since the LDS church's famous book claims to be about 3 civilizations that lived somewhere in north,central or south america. As far as I understand, one or more LDS leaders years ago decided (for arguably valid reasons) that all of the Book of Mormon events occurred between 600 BC to about AD 400. This has made it more difficult for the church to say "look,…

The Book of Mormon never claims that everyone died in the Americas at AD ~400. Nor does it claim that its account of the peoples there is comprehensive. In fact, it says the opposite: that splinter groups settled elsewhere, that there were other bands of people in the land, and that after the destruction of the Nephites, the millions of remaining Lamanites continued to sprawl over the land.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#29

Post by 52-6F-62 »

wjnc wrote: post #16
52-6F-62 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my field of expertise, but why wouldn't we just run LIDAR scans of as much of the earth's surface as possible? Is it prohibitively expensive at this point? Is the computation [relatively] expensive? Is there a sound reason we don't race to do more? I get the feeling this kind of data could inspire generations of new archaeologists and historians. There are also some pseudo-archeological and pseudo-histori…

A few hints from the article: 810 sq miles mapped, a three year project and lidar flying by helicopter. Another giveaway is the search for MH370. In some dimensions Earth is still huge!

I guess I'll just have to study up on the tech. IIRC there was a fairly quick LIDAR demo put on by a team at MIT that scanned the campus and surrounding areas in a relatively brief amount of time using a drone, I think.

My ignorance on the subject of LIDAR has me wondering why we can't use a faster traveling vehicle, or would it be possible to do perform scans with something like a fleet of balloons that stream the data back vs one static device.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#30

Post by acjohnson55 »

baron816 wrote: post #21
wjnc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few hints from the article: 810 sq miles mapped, a three year project and lidar flying by helicopter. Another giveaway is the search for MH370. In some dimensions Earth is still huge!

I wonder how much city life biases us to think the planet is smaller than it is. Perhaps it explains fears of overpopulation.

To me, fears of overpopulation have less to do with how much of the earth serves as living space, but how much human activity currently impacts nearly every corner of the planet. I think it's plausible that we can lessen human impact without actually decreasing population. Not sure it's likely, though.
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