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“Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

bbc.com

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Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#31

Post by realusername »

bshimmin wrote: post #22
captaintacos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coordinates you posted point to the sea off the coast of Cote d'Ivoire... The actual coordinates are these: 17.9447247, -90.1666302 And by the way, I also noticed that no news outlet seems to even bother to post the coordinates.

Perhaps you missed the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

He is probably not American.

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#32

Post by kangar00 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #6
kangar00 wrote: post #4

It may be anything , but I think it's a little strange how they shot this down so fast without any evidence. Makes me wonder if this is a desperate attempt to deter looters.

Probably not. http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/32829/has-a-fift... > Very few Maya constellations have been identified, and even in these cases we do not know how many and which stars exactly composed each constellation. It is thus impossible to check whether there is any correspondence between the stars and the location of Maya cities. In general, since we know of several environmental facts that influenc…

I didn't know about the relic milpa idea. I guess if there were a lot of thick solid fertilizer just in that rectangular area that wouldn't run off easily, it could possibly do that.

I think someone should check it out to be sure.

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#33

Post by sspiff »

azernik wrote: post #20
nathancahill wrote: post #16

You could literally throw a dart at a map of the Yucatan/Northern Central America and it would land on an "Ancient Mayan city". I grew up there, and our house was built on top of Maya ruins, we'd find hundreds of ruins in the surrounding mountains. We used to dig up full ceramic bowls and a ton of obsidian in the garden. The hype around this kid is amazing.

Like Roman stuff in the Middle East. It's interesting when something pops up that's particularly well preserved, but that they were here is not a particular surprise.

Or Roman stuff in Europe, though often ruins in the ME are better preserved because they got covered in sand (and IS did not find them yet).

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#34

Post by iopuy »

Off topic but what is the purpose of the photo of the young lady at the bottom of the article? At first I thought it was the teen that made the discovery, then I thought it might be the author (on mobile this information is not easily visible), finally I concluded it has something to do with another article and is spliced into the original in a very confusing manner.

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#35

Post by St-Clock »

So we've been in Le Monde[1], now BBC and Hacker News. All of this because a tabloid newspaper from Montreal thought it was better to gain exposure than to protect and correct a young aspiring scientist. A local "mythbuster" [2] already debunked the whole story, but alas, the trashy newspaper is still pushing this fiasco from new angles every day.

I fear this whole story will be extremely bad for the kid and most news outlets should blame the newspaper instead of focusing on the kid or the bad science part.

[1] http://mobile.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2016/05/11/l-hi... [2] http://journalmetro.com/opinions/inspecteur-viral/962214/ce-...

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#37

Post by Vraxx »

danso wrote: post #11

Maybe the link should be changed to Gizmodo instead of "BBC Trending" (which seems to be the linkbait division of BBC)...Gizmodo has much more detail and original reporting, e.g. contacting the Canadian Space Agency for comment: http://gizmodo.com/experts-doubt-that-a-teen-found-a-lost-ma... FWIW, the CSA doesn't seem to have much of an explanation... > We asked De Lisle to respond to the claims made by experts that…

While I think your point about misplaced expertise is a accurate point in most regards, there is reason to believe that the space agency might have some expertise in the field of remote sensing. NASA launched many satellites that are invaluable tools for the field and they continue to research data gathered by these satellites and post it on many of their sites [0]. They also employ image analysts trained in analyzing this data, so it's not that far fetched to believe the Canadian Space Agency might have had image analysts that agreed with the kid. I'd also like to add that I would also have expected some sort of in person verification, or at least higher resolution aerial imagery to have been gathered before breaking out the party cake.

[0]: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/

edit: oops, I forgot my link

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#38

Post by jackgavigan »

Cripes, people are such killjoys! The counter-claims pooh-poohing the lad's "discovery" smack of schadenfreudensuchen. So what if there's a bit of media hype? It's a nice feelgood story and the kid hasn't done anything wrong. In fact, that's the sort of curiosity and inquisitiveness we should be fostering in schoolkids.

Re: “Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

#39

Post by saalweachter »

spraak wrote: post #9

> "The whole thing is a mess - a terrible example of junk science hitting the internet in free-fall," wrote Dr David Stuart Wouldn't it actually be an excellent example of 'junk science hitting the internet in free-fall' ?

Perhaps the archaic definition, "causing terror"? Does the idea that random bunk can consume both scientific resources and digital ink terrify you?
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