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Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

bbc.com

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Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#31

Post by barkingcat »

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.

Overpopulation at a certain level of consumption is a valid concern.

If all 7.4 billion people on the planet all consume 3 burger patties a day, all drive internal combustion powered vehicles, and all have a new iphone each, that would very quickly require an extreme amount of resource consumption - it is unsustainable.

Of course, if you just want "as high a population at any cost" the earth can probably sustain trillions of humans, but the bulk of those humans would have no clean water to drink, with no access to clean air, no access to a livable wage, no reasonable access to hospital and emergency services, etc.

You could have a trillion slaves, all pampering the lives of a the select few hundred billionaires who own everything. That's the real fear of overpopulation.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#32

Post by jacquesm »

cr0sh wrote: post #8
vosper wrote: post #2

I'm reading "Lost City of the Monkey God" by Douglas Preston right now. It's been a highly entertaining first-hand account of (what I think was) the first use of LIDAR for archaeology in the jungles of Central America, and the ground exploration that followed. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's interested in this story. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01G1K1RTA

I just started reading this book last night (my wife listened to the audiobook version several months ago, which caught my interest). Strange how these things "come together"...

That's more of a reflection of how big HN has become than anything else.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#33

Post by ga_golfnut »

mholt wrote: post #28
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.

And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#34

Post by dragonwriter »

ga_golfnut wrote: post #33
mholt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.

> And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims.

Horses definitively existed in (far enough) precolumbian America. The dominant belief seems to be that they died out (perhaps due to human hunting) at or shortly after the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 10-12kya, but there is some evidence there may have been some populations around as late as ca. 3kya, IIRC.

EDIT: of course, one must keep in mind that the horses of precolumbian America were much smaller than Old World horses, so it's not really plausible that they'd be being ridden, pulling chariots, or generally being used like Old World horses even if it is (just barely) plausible that they were around at the right time.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#35

Post by erikpukinskis »

vanderZwan wrote: post #27
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].…

This is why liberals are sometimes using the term genocide more broadly in a way conservatives don’t like. They reference things like “black genocide” and conservatives get mad because the actual slayings are too few to be considered “genocide”.

Yet in terms of lost culture, putting a high enough percentage of individuals in prison, and confining enough of the others to ghettos, while driving them out of historical cultural centers, has an equivalent result to genocide in some ways.

Essentially, a percentage of the people can be alive while also having “the culture” be as dead as dead can be.

Of course the culture is born again in a different form, as Native American culture endures today, despite “genocide”. And rendering that invisible is just a continuation of that genocide so I certainly don’t want to intimate that such culture is truly gone.

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#36

Post by mholt »

ga_golfnut wrote: post #33
mholt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.

There certainly is, you just have to look for it. https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/new-evidence-for-horses...

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#38

Post by ziotom78 »

The is one thing I don't understand. The article reports the use of lasers to map the ground, yet they mention the presence of foliage in situ. Assuming that they use optical or infrared lasers, foliage should be completely opaque at these wavelengths. How did they manage to map the asperities and characteristics of the ground?

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#39

Post by ga_golfnut »

dragonwriter wrote: post #34
ga_golfnut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.

> And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. Horses definitively existed in (far enough) precolumbian America. The dominant belief seems to be that they died out (perhaps due to human hunting) at or shortly after the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 10-12kya, but there is some evi…

I should have qualified that with "during the Book of Mormon timeline".

Re: Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

#40

Post by ga_golfnut »

mholt wrote: post #36
ga_golfnut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it also says things like horses, chariots, steel, and other anachronistic things existed in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is no evidence (to date) to support any of those claims. You might want to look into the history of NWAF and Thomas Ferguson. Michael Coe, a renowned expert in this field and also mentioned on this post, was friends with Ferguson. It's an interesting history.

There certainly is, you just have to look for it. https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/new-evidence-for-horses...

> While the evidence for horses in pre-Columbian America is encouraging, it still requires some caution. Additional C-14 dating from other samples will be needed to change the prevailing view. Until then, this evidence should be considered provisional, but promising.

And was that peer reviewed?

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