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I said I've visited several sites in the Yucatan including the museum in Merida where they have a huge number of artifacts. So, it's safe to assume most all of

by oblib 5y ago

I said I've visited several sites in the Yucatan including the museum in Merida where they have a huge number of artifacts. So, it's safe to assume most all of what I saw there was Mayan. It's very possible that some of what I saw at Cahokia is Mayan trade goods and that is why I asked if those cultures could have been in touch with each other. To be clear, I did not say "archeologists deny there is a connection". I said the Park Rangers there denied it with a scripted response and refused to even discuss the possibility Mayans had been there.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
I'm an archaeologist with relevant experience. Long distance, sustained contact between these regions didn't exist. Mayan trade networks are pretty heavily studied and from what we know they didn't extend north much past central Mexico. It's very common for people to see similarities in regions that weren't connected by contact though. People find it very hard to identify cross-cultural relationships in art/design unless they're intimately familiar with the cultural background and language of the designs. As someone who presumably isn't a time traveling precolumbian native, you're doubly alien to their cultural background. It's the same sort of phenomenon as the other-race effect. With enough exposure and practice, you get better at seeing the nuances and differences that weren't immediately apparent. Even archaeologists are affected by this and it only gets better with experience and study. There can also be false similarities in some objects and styles due to convergent evolution. Houses in certain parts of Nepal look remarkably like ancestral puebloan structures. There was no contact, but they converged on broadly similar styles because of similarities in the resources provided by the local environments and the constraints of building good houses. For the record, there's a long history of "theories" that posit mesoamericans came up into what's now the US and built all of the native structures that are there today. These ideas are pretty soundly rejected by the archaeological community and they're also a bit racist. You undoubtedly didn't intend to suggest this, but that's likely how it came across to the ranger. Rangers aren't perfect and sometimes they have bad days. They're generally majority correct though and worth listening to when they shut down discussions.
- oblib 5y ago
  The key words for me in all you wrote are "from what we know". What I know is that the Mayans who still live there say our archaeologists here tend to ignore them. Two Mayan Park Rangers told me that while I was standing on top of a pyramid enjoying the refreshing breeze up there on a vicious hot and humid day. One of the things I noticed in all those places (Cahokia, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico) is that refreshing breeze and I mentioned that to those Mayan Park Rangers because it occurred to me after visiting many sites there that maybe those structures were built to provide a place to cool down from working in the fields below and they were both astonished. They instantly changed their attitude and started talking to me. They confirmed that is why they were built and went on to say that the archaeologists who come there are completely dismissive and arrogant and don't ever talk to them to try and learn from them. That's what they told me. You can do what you will with it. Finally, what those Park Rangers at Cahokia said was boilerplate legalese. It was not a conversation I had with them. They refused to converse because they are instructed to not even discuss it. Go there and test it yourself.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    I'm not a mesoamericanist. The relationship between indigenous mayans and archeologists is indeed complicated and highly political, but not particularly relevant to our discussion here. Since you seem to be fishing for someone to point out the issues in your pet theories, I find it useful to start from the assumption that historical peoples weren't stupid about how to achieve their goals. Let's look at the cooling platform hypothesis in that light: 1) It takes a lot less labor to build a tower (like they did at palenque) than to build a pyramid. 2) It kind of defeats the purpose of a breeze driven cooling platform to have a big temple and narrow doors taking up most of the usable area. Triadic pyramids might fit the bill except for all the obvious reasons they don't. 3) The stairs are uncomfortably steep even for modern people. 4) The pyramids are pretty far from where they would have grown crops. Instead they're on elevated rocky ground that could support them. 5) Big fields of crops weren't really the classical mayan style of agriculture. Mayans tended to live in reasonable proximity to their fields and it's baffling why they'd walk a fair distance to the pyramid when they could retire to their much closer, presumably comfortable houses. 6) Cooling platforms would have kept being useful, but mayans stopped building, maintaining, or even using these structures in the postclassic. People will tell you a lot of things, particularly in tourist traps. Many will also agree with whatever crazy ideas you come up with in the interests of appearing friendly and/or for money. You don't necessarily need to take everything at face value (a lesson I've been trying to teach my father for years).

by oblib 5y ago

AlotOfReading 5y ago

I'm an archaeologist with relevant experience. Long distance, sustained contact between these regions didn't exist. Mayan trade networks are pretty heavily studied and from what we know they didn't extend north much past central Mexico. It's very common for people to see similarities in regions that weren't connected by contact though. People find it very hard to identify cross-cultural relationships in art/design unless they're intimately familiar with the cultural background and language of the designs. As someone who presumably isn't a time traveling precolumbian native, you're doubly alien to their cultural background. It's the same sort of phenomenon as the other-race effect. With enough exposure and practice, you get better at seeing the nuances and differences that weren't immediately apparent. Even archaeologists are affected by this and it only gets better with experience and study. There can also be false similarities in some objects and styles due to convergent evolution. Houses in certain parts of Nepal look remarkably like ancestral puebloan structures. There was no contact, but they converged on broadly similar styles because of similarities in the resources provided by the local environments and the constraints of building good houses. For the record, there's a long history of "theories" that posit mesoamericans came up into what's now the US and built all of the native structures that are there today. These ideas are pretty soundly rejected by the archaeological community and they're also a bit racist. You undoubtedly didn't intend to suggest this, but that's likely how it came across to the ranger. Rangers aren't perfect and sometimes they have bad days. They're generally majority correct though and worth listening to when they shut down discussions.

oblib 5y ago
The key words for me in all you wrote are "from what we know". What I know is that the Mayans who still live there say our archaeologists here tend to ignore them. Two Mayan Park Rangers told me that while I was standing on top of a pyramid enjoying the refreshing breeze up there on a vicious hot and humid day. One of the things I noticed in all those places (Cahokia, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico) is that refreshing breeze and I mentioned that to those Mayan Park Rangers because it occurred to me after visiting many sites there that maybe those structures were built to provide a place to cool down from working in the fields below and they were both astonished. They instantly changed their attitude and started talking to me. They confirmed that is why they were built and went on to say that the archaeologists who come there are completely dismissive and arrogant and don't ever talk to them to try and learn from them. That's what they told me. You can do what you will with it. Finally, what those Park Rangers at Cahokia said was boilerplate legalese. It was not a conversation I had with them. They refused to converse because they are instructed to not even discuss it. Go there and test it yourself.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  I'm not a mesoamericanist. The relationship between indigenous mayans and archeologists is indeed complicated and highly political, but not particularly relevant to our discussion here. Since you seem to be fishing for someone to point out the issues in your pet theories, I find it useful to start from the assumption that historical peoples weren't stupid about how to achieve their goals. Let's look at the cooling platform hypothesis in that light: 1) It takes a lot less labor to build a tower (like they did at palenque) than to build a pyramid. 2) It kind of defeats the purpose of a breeze driven cooling platform to have a big temple and narrow doors taking up most of the usable area. Triadic pyramids might fit the bill except for all the obvious reasons they don't. 3) The stairs are uncomfortably steep even for modern people. 4) The pyramids are pretty far from where they would have grown crops. Instead they're on elevated rocky ground that could support them. 5) Big fields of crops weren't really the classical mayan style of agriculture. Mayans tended to live in reasonable proximity to their fields and it's baffling why they'd walk a fair distance to the pyramid when they could retire to their much closer, presumably comfortable houses. 6) Cooling platforms would have kept being useful, but mayans stopped building, maintaining, or even using these structures in the postclassic. People will tell you a lot of things, particularly in tourist traps. Many will also agree with whatever crazy ideas you come up with in the interests of appearing friendly and/or for money. You don't necessarily need to take everything at face value (a lesson I've been trying to teach my father for years).