11 ms·
Maya ritual cave ‘untouched’ for 1k years stuns archaeologists
- lexxed 8y agoDoctor June Moone's cave
- duopixel 8y ago> Segovia identified 155 artifacts, some with faces of Toltec rain god Tláloc, and others with markings of the sacred ceiba tree It would be significant, because the Mayan version of this god is Chaac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaac, and there's some speculation over who inherited the god from whom: > Although the name Tlaloc is specifically Aztec, worship of a storm god like Tlaloc, associated with mountaintop shrines and with life-giving rain, is as at least as old as Teotihuacan and likely was adopted from the Maya god Chaac or vice versa, or perhaps he was ultimately derived from an earlier Olmec precursor. An underground Tlaloc shrine has been found at Teotihuacan.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C4%81loc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C4%81loc But my suspicion is that the archaeologist might have said something like "we found faces of Chaac, who is equivalent to Tláloc" (because Mexicans are much more familiar with Tláloc) and then it was mangled by the reporter.
- mexica6767 8y agoI wish people would stop using the term Aztec because there are no Aztecs known to us. Aztec was the slave name of the mythical civilization that took part on the exodus. They are mexicas not Aztecs.
- eps 8y ago"Explorers needed to crawl for hours just to reach first of seven offering chambers"... followed by a shot of one of them, flat of his stomach, clawing at the surface and just barely squeezing through, head turned sideways. I am not a claustrofobic person, but this is... damn... this feels suicidal. Makes you realize that some people are wired way differently than others. Edit - https://imgur.com/EHrwHs3.jpg https://imgur.com/EHrwHs3.jpg
- yread 8y agoCave exploration is sometimes like that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAY-t32vyds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAY-t32vyds
- eps 8y agoYeah, I've seen this one. This is an "alternative entrance" to a decently-sized cave with a normal access elsewhere off camera. That's not to say there aren't examples of some truly disturbing spelunking - https://i.imgur.com/BkmpH9v.jpg https://i.imgur.com/BkmpH9v.jpg
- phkahler 8y agoDamn that's frightening. They need semi-autonomous robots (spider-like?) to crawl ahead with a camera before going head-first into a place like that.
- xenophonf 8y agoOh man, that poor guy didn't make it: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/705347362/Man-trapped-in-Utah-Countys-Nutty-Putty-cave-dies.html https://www.deseretnews.com/article/705347362/Man-trapped-in...
- okmokmz 8y agoI saw that picture and read up more on the story a while back... absolutely horrifying situation. Stuck upside down underground for hours, unable to move or escape even though there are others right behind you that you can communicate with until you eventually die. Somewhat unrelated, but that is part of what made me decide to not further pursue my cave diving certification
- paulddraper 8y agoThat image is simply terrifying.
- menzoic 8y agoMaybe not wired differently. It could be that they've gained knowledge and experience that makes this seem normal/safe.
- est31 8y agoMost of all, I hope they'll find some books in there. Only four books have survived [1], beyond some highly damaged works which need serious improvement in CT technology (or other tools) so that we can read them, if they can be read at all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices
- biofox 8y agoThis is so painful to read. From the Bishop who oversaw the destruction: "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." I can barely imagine the anguish those people must have felt. Imagine witnessing the destruction of your entire recorded history. Virtually all of the knowledge and art produced by the civilization wiped out in a single act.
- coleifer 8y agoIt's like that one time we decided to do a rewrite... without tests.
- ngold 8y agoSealed up for 50 years after it was discovered is one of the greatest gifts to modern archeology ever. I can't fathom the loss of truly insightful historical knowledge that would have been lost if it was tampered with 50 years ago. What a hero to the future of humanity in understanding our past.
- terhechte 8y agoWouldn't sealing it up another 50 years even better? We don't know which much better technologies we have in 50 years
- joshschreuder 8y agoI feel this way about technical debt sometimes :) There has to be some point where you start on something otherwise in 50 years they would be wondering about the tech available 50 years from that.
- ianai 8y agoIf you ignore technical debt for 50 years there’s a good chance the problem will resolve itself! Because no one will be using the software.
- ianai 8y agoSpeaking as an outsider, I grew up near Hispanic cultures in the Southwest. I think there’s a need for better information about the Maya. For one, there’s a basic lack of understanding of time “before America” across the US. Most I've met seem to operate as though human history in the Americas only started with independence. The colonists wiped out a huge amount of history and culture. We might not have the best technology that could ever exist, but we do have a great need to appreciate a shared past. Fifty years from now people will be further from the past and more likely to take it even less seriously.
- vertak 8y ago@ianai you should give the book 1491 a read, it is likely exactly what you're looking for and a well written book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...
- lelima 8y agoMaya mia!
- your-nanny 8y agoI don't know anything about this team, but the ideal procedure would be minimal disturbance of this site, with minimal removal of artifacts from the site. Organic material for carbon dating, great. There are several principles that one mist follow. Archeology is a destructive science: you can't dig the same pit twice, you can't remove artifacts a second time. So the first principle is: document everything, and destroy as little as you can. The second principle is that you must proceed with respect for the living Maya, who may well regard this adventure as a violation of a holy site of their ancestors.
- skilled 8y agoWell put, I second this!
- zimablue 8y agoDo you own your ancestors?
- your-nanny 8y agoClarify what you mean and I might answer the question.
- zimablue 8y agoYour previous answer seems to presume that there are groups of people to whom other groups of people are ancestors, and the first have special rights over anything that happens to the artifacts/remains of the second, I was trying to break down how you think about that. Eg. how do you identify the first and second groups unambiguously, and what sort of rights and limits apply.
- ulisesrmzroche 8y agoWhat’s so puzzling? It’s a Mayan site so it belongs to the Mayans. They have full rights, even if that means preventing the study of it to non-Mayan archeologists. Simple.
- phkahler 8y agoI'm curious about how they decide this is a religious site. The artifacts have images on them, but that can't be the only indicator of why they were there can it? Why build pyramids and other things above ground but then make people crawl deep into a hole to have a small religious site? Isn't it more likely people of lower status were forced to live underground and this is their stash of valuables? - to give just one possible alternate interpretation. How do they decide what a site is? I'm sure they take into account all the other knowledge that has been gathered over the years and put this find in context. That's largely missing from the article.
- INTPenis 8y agoYou're not the first to question this. In other forums I've seen people state that archaeologists have a tendency to say ritual whenever they're not sure of something. If it can be properly dated then it's unlikely regular people were living under a pyramid. But if it can't then it might as well be refugees taking shelter in the mayan ruins after its civilization collapsed.
- dkersten 8y ago"Religious site" always seems like a cop-out to me, like saying "we don't know what this was used for, must have been a religious site", but since I'm not an archaeologist or historian, I have to trust that the people who actually are those things know what they're doing and know how to determine if something truly was a religious site or not.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoYes. I have the same reaction when I see an old site called a 'temple'. Who -knows- what the frame of mind was of a culture thousands of years ago (particularly if nothing's written)? Often it seems like just another way of implying 'pre-scientific', 'magical', 'savage'... less-developed than us. A more -practical- explanation seems more plausible in many cases. E.g. Gobekli looks -educational- to my eyes; I see multiple classrooms.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoSo some of those objects appear much too large to fit thru the narrow places to get into the cave. How did they get there? Were they made in place?
- roceys 8y agothx. learned.
- sudoaza 8y agoI hope they preserve at least some of it instead of escavating it
- toyg 8y agoSomething is weird. > After its initial discovery by farmers in 1966, Balamku was visited by archaeologist Víctor Segovia Pinto Segovia Pinto reportedly died in 1955, according to this source: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fprohispen.com%2Fvictor-segovia-pinto%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=es&tl=en&u=htt... 1955 was 11 years before the reported discovery. Either there is a typo somewhere, or Pinto was not the original discoverer. Pinto was a bit of a celeb at the time, so it's entirely possible that someone erroneously attributed to him what happened in 1966, or that the discovery happened before but was only recorded in 1966.
- cr1895 8y agoHere is a publication he supposedly authored in 1981: https://books.google.nl/books?id=bHcgCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA198&ots=_izQqeMrKE&dq=victor%20segovia%20pinto&pg=PA198#v=onepage&q=victor%20segovia%20pinto&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=bHcgCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA198&ots=...
- asveikau 8y agoProbably a bad source or typo. This one, from a university, says he died in '95 on a specific day and place. https://revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/estudios-cultura-maya/index.php/ecm/article/view/466 https://revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/estudios-cultura-maya/i...
- jandrese 8y agoMaybe his father?
- elpakal 8y agoI was born and lived for some time in the nearby state of Chiapas. Currently a coder working in a big city, fighting traffic and pollution every day, away from wife and kids, worrying about production issues, health, etc. When I see articles about discoveries like this it always brings me back to my childhood days driving around the Palenque ruins, seeing the miles and miles of hills which were obviously ruins that had become overgrown but that the government had yet to uncover. There are countless more discoveries like this just waiting in plain sight. Knowing that always gives me some kind of peace inside - what we know about ourselves and how we have evolved is very little.
- peterlk 8y ago"... We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there--important, that is, simply as an idea." - Wallace Stegner Your comment reminded me of this excerpt of a letter to the American Congress about environmental preservation.
- keypusher 8y ago> some researchers have suggested that excessive deforestation in the Maya lowlands, which was once home to some 10-15 million people I just can't quite get over this stat they dropped in here. 15 million people in ~250 AD puts it in the same neighborhood as ancient Greece at their peak a few hundred years earlier.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoI found this paragraph really stunning -- But until the concept of cave archaeology began to take shape in the 1980s, archaeologists were more interested in monumental architecture and intact artifacts than they were in analyzing the residues and materials found in and around objects. When Balankanché was excavated in 1959, caves were still mapped by hand in the dark and artifacts were routinely removed from their sites, cleaned, and later put back. Of all the incense burners found in Balankanché that were filled with material that could have provided definitive evidence related to the chronology of the site, for instance, only one was ever analyzed. Archaeologists essentially destroying archaeological information based on the inability to see/measure it. I have never met a scientist that came across a discovery and said, "Wow, this is a huge discovery and we're not even close to being equipped enough to process it correctly, lets just seal it up again and wait." But that was what happened here. It is so amazing to get the chance to look deeply into these things with more capable technology.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> I have never met a scientist that came across a discovery and said, "Wow, this is a huge discovery and we're not even close to being equipped enough to process it correctly, lets just seal it up again and wait." This is pretty much exactly what happened with the tomb of the Qin First Emperor, a site of obvious historical importance in a country with extreme respect for history. And I'm given to understand that it is now standard practice elsewhere to try to leave most of a site buried, so that future archaeologists with better technology may be able to dig in the more pristine part. So archaeology has certainly developed in this direction, probably through the experience of wanting to test new techniques on old sites and not being able to. I'm not sure why this concept would apply to "scientists" in general, though. If you're looking for facts about the present, you can't really contaminate them by investigation.
- throwmeaway13 8y agoAnd though their source[1] does not quite back Wikipedia on this particular sentence, let me just the that the idea has at least been written about, in the case of Göbekli Tepe[2] (in the south-east end of Turkey): less than 5% of the site has been excavated, and Schmidt planned to leave much of it untouched to be explored by future generations when archaeological techniques will presumably have improved [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/30706129.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/30706129.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe