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2k-year-old Mayan civilization discovered in northern Guatemala
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoFun fact: People descended from these civilizations still exist, broadly called Maya peoples, although they don't really view themselves as a singular group because they all have their own cultures/languages/civilizations they came from!
- moloch-hai 4y agoThere is still Nahuatl. Which I imagine has splintered like Latin, but really don't know.
- ithkuil 4y agoThe Nahua people are a distinct ethnical group from the Mayas. The Nahua people were already subdivided into multiple ethnic groups a mllenia ago. Famous examples are the Mexica people (Aztecs) and Toltecs.
- moloch-hai 4y agoI am corrected. Do we have a name for the language family Mayans' descendants speak?
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThe language family is literally called "Mayan". As an aside, the people are Maya without an -n.
- ithkuil 4y agoYes, actual languages in that family are for example Kʼicheʼ, Yucatec, Mopan
- francisofascii 4y agoI wonder if these people have immunity to malaria and other types of rainforest diseases.
- ryao 4y agoThey found ruins of a civilization. If they found an actual civilization, it would be a political matter.
- IAmLiterallyAB 4y agoFrom the title I was imagining an uncontacted tribe like the Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese
- macintux 4y agoRecent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34115109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34115109 5-year-old discussion that may or may not be related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16291272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16291272
- moloch-hai 4y agoI am always on the lookout for more about the 23ky-old Gunung Padang pyramid on Java. It was long thought just a hill, until it was shown to have been built instead. As far as I know only Danny Widjaja is working on it. It should have a whole department excavating it.
- romanhn 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the accepted dating is much more recent (~2kyo). > Thirty-four Indonesian scientists signed a petition questioning the motives and methods of the Hilman-Arif team. Archaeologist Víctor Pérez described Natawidjaja's conclusions as pseudoarchaeology.
- moloch-hai 4y agoWikipedia is singularly unreliable on prehistory, being curated largely by retired history professors out to defend whatever they argued back in grad school. What matters more than petitions is actual surface luminescence measurements.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThey've taken subsequent radiocarbon dates and they're much more recent. OSL is a newer, more expensive technique that performs poorly in wet, volcanic rock, much less in an area that probably doesn't have highly refined curves. It's likely that no one has taken any samples.
- qwytw 4y ago> retired history professors I would still rate this group as more reliable than pseudo archeologists with a political agenda.
- moloch-hai 4y agoA former (or current) history professor who blocks reporting of current measurements is a psuedo-what-have-you. A very current example is Younger Dryas Impact deniers. (Note that doubting the Impact actually caused the Younger Dryas cold spell does not by itself make one such a denier.)
- zeristor 4y agoBBC Compass podcast about building China funding train line through this area for tourism: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4kxr https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4kxr
- Fricken 4y agoThose ruins have been there for a while. Guatemala got 'em all a long time ago.
- mLuby 4y agoTangent: Guatemala remains one of my favorite travels. The Mayan ruins are stunning, especially Tikal (Yavin 4 for you Star Wars fans), you can hike on volcanos or in jungles, and I can't recommend enough the old Spanish city of Antigua. (Lake Atitlán was fine. Skip Livingston beach on the east coast.)
- veddox 4y agoInteresting! Although I found the original paper much more illuminating than the write-up: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/article/lidar-analyses-in-the-contiguous-miradorcalakmul-karst-basin-guatemala-an-introduction-to-new-perspectives-on-regional-early-maya-socioeconomic-and-political-organization/31075DFA8ADBAA5E7C7320CA6DB93E5E https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/... Also, the use of the word „civilisation“ here feels wrong. What they discovered was an early, large-scale polity of a known civilisation.
- billbrown 4y agoIf anyone's interested in a very accessible look at LIDAR exploration, I highly recommend explorer Albert Lin's National Geographic series Lost Cities.[1] [1] https://www.natgeotv.com/za/shows/natgeo/lost-cities-with-albert-lin https://www.natgeotv.com/za/shows/natgeo/lost-cities-with-al...