6 ms·

How did the Maya survive?

161 points by speckx 9mo ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20260212085552/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/feb/12/apocalypse-no-how-almost-everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-the-maya-is-wrong https://web.archive.org/web/20260212085552/https://www.thegu... https://archive.ph/0tGht https://archive.ph/0tGht

ViktorRay 9mo ago
The title is clickbait but the article itself is highly informative and interesting to read. Highly recommend it.
- SunshineTheCat 9mo ago
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  - seemaze 9mo ago
    Corn, beans and squash. Everyday. Oh, you have to grow it and harvest it without tractors. Caloric balance achieved!
    - sandworm101 9mo ago
      And a layer of tropical diseases/parasites would also help churn through calories. They may have been in better shape but few sane people would claim they were actually any healthier than we are today.
      - seemaze 9mo ago
        All but those few sane people would agree! No claims of longevity or quality are under litigation; It was merely informed speculation on The ultimate diet pill that only the Maya people knew..
        yndoendo 9mo ago
        Vitamin D would be at peak too ...
- Gualdrapo 9mo ago
  Not sure if it's 100% clickbait, there is some really interesting stuff I didn't know. Also it makes me realize that all indigenous peoples across what you call the Americas have been/are being subjected to all kinds of discrimination and systematic extermination, from North America all the way to the island of Tierra del Fuego, and of course here in Colombia. We all try to hide our own past for some reason and feel ashamed of it while ignoring the spaniard/european culture and beliefs they brought there have huge flaws compared to what was already here for thousands of years.
  - nradov 9mo ago
    That's true, the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity. But let's not romanticize the indigenous cultures either. They were equally flawed and did just as terrible things to other local groups. https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundred...
    - luqtas 9mo ago
      > the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history, with around 34 million people killed from 1500 up to 2025 with that said, people romanticize them too much. canibalism, war and also a (probably) big impact in one of the most rich ecosystems of Earth: the Amazon was ripped with their practices of burning stuff and planting dominant species among the forest that reduced for sure the amount of biodiversity in their +15,000 years of existence there. tho not defending EU ppl ripping out their forest till the border of rivers
      - ljsprague 9mo ago
        >not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history Does this number include deaths due to introduced diseases?
        9mo ago
agentzed 9mo ago
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- krapp 9mo ago
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  - agentzed 9mo ago
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    - krapp 9mo ago
      Please leave. You aren't entertaining, you aren't insightful, you aren't even that creative. You aren't an original source on anything, you're just regurgitating UFO memes that went stale 20 years ago and vague woo-woo shit that only seems profound to the utterly ignorant. I won't engage with you again.
      - agentzed 9mo ago
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        parineum 9mo ago
        I have spoken with them and they said they've never heard of you.
        agentzed 9mo ago
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- deleted 9mo ago
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domoregood 9mo ago
Site has an adblocker allergy: https://archive.is/0tGht https://archive.is/0tGht
- deceptionatd 9mo ago
  Just out of curiosity, what adblocker? I read the Guardian a lot with uBlock Origin turned on, and I've never had issues.
  - domoregood 9mo ago
    Adblock Plus here
    - JCattheATM 9mo ago
      That's the problem, so switch to the superior uBlock origin :)
redwood 9mo ago
Incredibly interesting. Amazing to think at the very moment Europe was entering the Dark Ages, the Vikings were starting to raid, and Muhammad was having his visions, this civilization had built something comparable to what the Roman Empire had done in italy..
- renewiltord 9mo ago
  The Dark Ages never happened. They had electric lighting and then the sunlight came out.
- nine_k 9mo ago
  Amazing, but it's also terrifying that the Maya civilization then faltered, instead of getting onto the exponential development spiral. The great Roman civilization also faltered, but at least the Byzantium continued to carry some of its achievements. The great Arabian civilization was for some time more advanced than European (which was in the middle of the dark ages), but it also did not stay progressing for too long. There's no guarantee that our current "western civilization" line is not going to falter and decline in a similar way.
  - Scrapemist 9mo ago
    And that’s fine. Another follows after. If we leave them something.
    - mrguyorama 9mo ago
      Part of the problem is that industrialization was achieved by exploiting globs of easily available resources. But we used them all. We haven't left anyone something. It could very well be that we climbed the ladder and burned it behind us.
      - philipallstar 9mo ago
        What do you mean, we haven't left anyone something?
jasonpeacock 9mo ago
1491 is a great book about the history of the Americas before Columbus. https://a.co/d/03l04Lvv https://a.co/d/03l04Lvv
javier_e06 9mo ago
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1234letshaveatw 9mo ago
There must be incredible pressure on historians to be contrarians. Who is going to pay any attention if you are like "yeah, I've been employing novel techniques and new tech and discovered that all the stuff everyone has been saying is spot on" Not criticizing this article in particular but I am skeptical of this sort of stuff because I feel like the outcome of the research is predetermined.
- socalgal2 9mo ago
  Yea, well, how do historians from ~100 BC really have any clue what actually happened 100-300 years previously. Even down to claiming so-and-so said "..."
  - deleted 9mo ago
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  - Retric 9mo ago
    You can say the same thing about what happened 200-300 years ago. The thing is major events tend to have a lot of remnants left behind, nobody is going to pretend the American Civil war didn’t happen. The specifics of any given battle quickly get murky, and lesser events only have so many witnesses. Degrees of verification are a thing. LBJ being the US president isn’t in doubt. My family story where a relative was studying at the white house (with his daughter) and he came in and told them not to have so many lights in is jumping through a bunch of hops before it gets to you so you should only put so much weight on it. And that’s history in a nutshell.
- mmooss 9mo ago
  > contrarians There is pressure to discover something new, to publish. That does not require being contrary.
- cryptonector 9mo ago
  If it's media attention they want, you'd be right, but in fact you have the opposite pressure because no one wants to be judged a quack by their colleagues. You know what Max Planck said about how science advances, right? One obituary at a time.
ljsprague 9mo ago
>Some Maya cities were established hundreds of years before the founding of Rome, and they included significantly larger architecture that still stands. The Pantheon is qualitatively different than the massive pyramids the Maya built.
- Joker_vD 9mo ago
  Every time I hear an argument "The Egyptian pyramids are still standing to this day", I'm taken aback. Like, what can a pyramid even crumble into, a pile of stones? It already is a pile of stones! Literally!
  - MikeNotThePope 9mo ago
    Erosion.
    - 8bitsrule 9mo ago
      Quarrying (human erosion), as in 1303 Egypt, and with what the Spaniards did to Cuzco/Sacsayhuamán.
    - dredmorbius 9mo ago
      Erosion, water damage, freeze-thaw cycles, foundation settlement (these are literally mountains of stone built on sand), vandalism and other intentional damage, floodplain evolution. That last is particularly noteworthy as the Nile famously floods on an annual basis, and that itself is the basis for Egyptian civilisation as those floods created what is still one of the most fantastically productive breadbaskets of the world. Ancient Rome relied on Egypt for grain, and even today demographics data and more vividly night-time satellite light-pollution imagery reveal the Nile as a highly-populated ribbon within a sea of darkness and desolation. The pyramids have withstood multiple risks for many thousands of years. Despite their simple and rugged overall architecture, that remains impressive.
  - maxbond 9mo ago
    Some of the earlier pyramids did crumble. They made mistakes and learned from them and innovated over time. The pyramids aren't still standing (just) because of the materials, there's real structural engineering at work.

ab5tract 9mo ago

Where can I read this certainty of destroyed biodiversity? That sounds like an extremely unsupported position, considering that the Amazon has the highest rates of biodiversity today. The continued belittling of indigenous forestry practices contributes to out of control wildfires.

luqtas 9mo ago
https://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/181/1813954027/html/ https://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/181/1813954027/html... https://www.sp-amazon.org/publications https://www.sp-amazon.org/publications
- ab5tract 9mo ago
  > The forest itself, paleo-scientists of all stripes say, is much more domesticated than previously thought. This implies that the biodiversity is a result of (or, at the very least, supported by) the indigenous practices, which is a far cry from your claim that biodiversity suffered from those practices.
  - luqtas 9mo ago
    have you actually read anything? indigenous were pointed as responsibles for cultivating dominant species which had an impact and shaped the flora. the last website i published is a whole book showing how its rich biodiversity happened over multi million year processes. it also points out the impact on the "funneling" of species indigenous occupations had i still think despite their impact, they were exemplar compared to what we had on the rest of the world (but i never studied Asia). but it's not like they were magicians that had no impact on anything and lived in complete synergy with nature by increasing biodiversity. and if you think cultivating biological dominant species across a forest has no impact i suggest you to research on the many examples of alien flora effects on various ecosystem on modernity or even try to throw some Hawaiian Baby Woodrose somewhere out their native land to check how much these species take over anothers. they probably killed and reduced species expression to settle themselves there. but cest la vie. living has an impact after all
    - ab5tract 9mo ago
      You said certainty but now you say probably. Which is it? I never claimed that they had no impact, but it is clear that the impact tended towards neutral to positive because: a) the forest was still there; and b) it had the higher rate of biodiversity in the world. Indigenous burns in California are recognized as being a net positive for the old growth forests and the biodiversity within. It doesn’t take a lot to extrapolate that the same was true in the Amazon.
      - ab5tract 9mo ago
        To state it a different way: yes, of course and without doubt their very presence affected biodiversity. But you were talking about their practices, which tended towards custodial over exploitative. And overall these practices clearly supported biodiversity as a whole, otherwise we wouldn’t note the biodiversity of this region as anything special (see again the quote I took from your first article). I apologize anyway for my slightly combative tone. I appreciate the resources you shared even if I haven’t had time to absorb them in full yet.
        luqtas 9mo ago
        i'm just typing the way i de-romanticize them. we don't know much about their culture nor how much effected Amazon's biodiversity. what if it had twice the amount of species before their extensive practice of growing hyper dominant species? 11,000 years of human settlement on a land that evolved for millions of years in various separated isles that later got together via geologic events (thus the rich biodiversity of the region) can have a great impact from the very 1° comment i made i typed a (probably) when i touched this subject. if Europeans took indigenous knowledge to their land, maybe Europe forests wouldn't be ripped out. maybe it wouldn't work because their ecosystem. who knows. i'm not comparing indigenous people to anyone, i'm just trying to reflect they weren't magic saints of the forest as people portray. as a vegan i also dismiss a bunch of their living practices also California has nothing to do with the Amazon. that land catches fires naturally by lightning. various places that this phenomena happens evolved to deal with it. have you ever been to Amazon? it's so humid. regions of "terra preta" (indigenous practice of making the soil fertile, which involves burning) allowed them to grow various stuff but again, they were into hyper dominant species not expanding the forest (i guess). and as far i researched, terra preta regions are less than 2% of the whole Amazon forest
- deleted 9mo ago
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torginus 9mo ago

While I have no doubt that most Western colonial empires did not have the conquered's best interests at heart, I've read a theory (particularly about the Spaniards and Portugese in Latin America), is just Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization, which is a horrible crime to utter in some circles, but I feel like the evolution of Western systems of governance, diplomacy, technology, culture made it superior to most civilizations in the marketplace of ideas. One could see the mass appeal of a faraway king who promises three square meals, a decent lodging, a reasonable legal system, and preaches unconditional brotherly love, to every human being. And even if some of those things are only true some of the time, when taken in aggregate, this led to these people winning just often enough that the scales tipped in their favor over time. And while most non-Western civilizations were certainly superior over certain time periods in some aspect, those who ended up not being conquered, either had constant contact with the West to know what to expect, or recognized their own shortcomings and rapidly endeavored to remedy them. I don't think military conquest of a faraway land can be maintained without the consent of the populance, certainly not as a profitable endeavor, and that usually involves offering something to the populance they couldn't get otherwise. There are plenty of examples of people subjugated for centuries who have kept their religion, customs and identity, likewise most of the jihadists who shout 'Death To America!' probably still like Star Wars.

felipeerias 9mo ago
Civilisations in the Americas were significantly less technologically developed than those in Eurasia. We focus our analysis on the Spanish and Portuguese, but the outcome would not have been much different had their place been taken by the Ottoman or the Chinese. The Mayan and the Aztecs were roughly at a similar level of development as ancient Sumer or Babylon: good agricultural practices, irrigation, astronomy, elaborated culture, rich mythologies, very basic metallurgy, early state structures, etc. Sumer and Babylon were great civilisations whose legacy can still be traced today. The same is true for the Maya and the Aztec. Had you visited any of them in their prime, you would have been awed by their skill and sophistication. And yet, think of everything that happened in Eurasia between Hammurabi and Columbus, and you will get a sense of how wide the gap was when the two worlds met.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- torginus 9mo ago
  I'm glad you brought up the contrast between the Aztecs and Ottomans - the majority of South America was inhabited by tribes similar to Native Americans in the North. The Aztecs are noteworthy because of having an empire to conquer. I am not suggesting that their civilizations did not have artistic or cultural merit, but I think even in a fictional alternate history where the Spanish decided to peacefully trade with Montezuma, I bet a couple hundred years later these people would've had mechanical looms and walked around in tailored suits just the same as their European counterparts. Not to speak of an what an empire gaing such powerful technologies and ideas about running society would've done to its neighbors.
  - its_magic 9mo ago
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- fermisea 9mo ago
  What a bunch of nonsense. I really urge you to look into more contemporary research on it. By which measure were they less advanced? Tenochtitlan had a population of north of 200k when the Spanish arrived - bigger than most European cities at that time, bar a couple. When you read the chronicles of the conquistadores you realise how advanced they were in many ways compared with Europeans. Th Maya were contemporary to and very similar to Greece in many ways - definitely more advanced in some aspects of mathematics and astronomy, and had an extremely complex architecture. The gap wasn’t so big, and in some cases American cities were even more advanced - probably the complex sanitation system of most mesoamerican cities contributed to the biggest asymmetry of all - European cities were a Petri dish of filth and disease.
  - nradov 9mo ago
    Ironically it was that Petri dish of filth and disease which gave the Europeans their largest (unintentional) military advantage in the New World. Of course the horses and steel weapons were also a factor.
  - jltsiren 9mo ago
    Europe was technologically advanced but lacked in state capacity. The Aztecs and the Maya were the opposite. Sanitation is a literal stone age technology, originally developed by societies we have very little evidence of. It doesn't require technological sophistication — only a government capable of and willing to administer it. European middle ages were characterized by the lack of state capacity. Cities and trade declined after the fall of the West Roman Empire. Governments became weak and incapable, and the society was structured around regional warlords and their personal relationships. But technology kept moving on. While European societies had limited resources, they could do things their more capable predecessors could not. And then, towards the end of the middle ages, states started consolidating again.
  - jatora 9mo ago
    population size does not equal advanced. it implies some civilizational skill, of course, but to act like the gap wasn't gigantic is pretty unfounded. european guns, ships, philosophy, math, physics, etc. etc. was hilariously beyond the aztecs.
lukan 9mo ago
"Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization" If being good at running a civilisation means being good at making war and enslaving, then we objectivly were better, as we conquered and they lost. But if civilized means being in higher spirit and have a more happy population, then the proof needs to be different.
- torginus 9mo ago
  The reason the entire concept of 'Westerners' exist, is because empires who became dominant in the aforementioned dimensions conquered, subjugated other peoples on the continent, or others were forced to adapt to their standards to avoid the same fate. In a couple hundred years these populations in many ways were quite indistinguishable from their conquerors, as they adopted their customs and ways of running society. Many of these conqured peoples while becoming Westernized culturally, didn't escape the yoke of their conquerors until much later. This process was repeated in Latin America. I know there are a lot of politically motivated people are interested in simple stories of the virtuous locals versus the evil West, but the same story played out pretty much everywhere over different continents and timeframes. I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
  - lukan 9mo ago
    "I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico." Likely not, but both Rome and Spanish are usually considered "western" civilisations. But the Mayas did conquer too (and partly sacrificed the captured).
    - anthk 9mo ago
      Spain still uses the Roman Law and save for the Basques (which are the cousins of Iberians) the 95% of the culture it's Western. The 5% it's just pre-Roman folklore (Basque, Celtic, Celtic-Iberian and so on) which survived Romanization and Christianization. But, even when being fully assimilated, I can always find some older Iberian substrate surviving in the North of Spain and the French Basque Country, some social behaviour predating Rome and the Catholic Kingdoms, such as the concept of the communal assemblies in towns and villages found all over in Spain. From these arrangements between the people and Kingdoms the concept of Fueros (some kind of agreement/constution between the villages' ruling and the King) was born and if some king was about to rule a Kingdom, he/she was prompty required to respect them 'by the grace of God' AKA 'respect these scrolls or you will be kicked from the throne faster than a drunk knight falling off from a horse'.
xg15 9mo ago
If the "marketplace of ideas" with regards to civilizations had been some sort of borderless utopia where people would just naturally emigrate to the best civilization and become members in equal standing there, you could argue like this. Unfortunately, what actually happened was brutal invasion and dehumanization. "We are higher developed than this other group, therefore we have the right to subjugate them, take all their resources, enslave them and even kill them" was essentially the classic justification of colonialism for a long time.
- torginus 9mo ago
  No empire in the world would have been able to accomplish what the Spaniards did if the indigenous population of millions decided to put up a strong resistance against them. The 2014 Ukraine invasion worked because the nation was splintered and demoralized, and the Russians could just roll in and take what tey wanted. The 2022 didn't because the Ukrainians were unified and willing to fight, despite a much higher degree of military readiness on the Russian side. But going back, over time, the native population became serfs, picked up the language, culture, religion of their conquerors, they even intermarried to a significant degree. Latin America is full of people with both European and native ancestry to some degree. Yes they were serfs, but so were most European peasants at that time. And only a couple hundred years later, as the Spanish empire collapsed, these people, culturally Westernized at this point, threw off the yoke and formed their independent countries, with Mexico starting it's own empire. I just cannot imagine a credible scenario in which even if Western colonial powers didn't manage to conquer the territory of Mexico, they wouldn't have been Westernized to a significant degree, by the Aztec rulers themselves starting a Meiji style modernization.

lyu07282 9mo ago

Colonialism never really ended it just transitioned into a different form, sometimes even very overtly like parts of africa are still using the french colonial currency union (CFA) for example, the IMF keeps the global south in debt entrapment with structural adjustment programs designed to prevent development. etc. etc. we never really left them alone

cpursley 9mo ago
I'm happy other people are thinking about this. One of the big stories over the fast years that few know about is a number of the French colonies kicking off the shackles. Can they make it on their own or with their new Chinese and Russian "friends"? Guess we'll see.
- lyu07282 9mo ago
  This platform is 90% just comfortable shitlibs living in the imperial core, so can't expect much. I think BRICS is the best thing that ever happened to the global south, if only to provide a counterbalance to the western 'empire of chaos'. As a Kenyan official put it: "Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture."
wahern 9mo ago
> IMF keeps the global south in debt entrapment with structural adjustment programs designed to prevent development. etc. etc. we never really left them alone Countries invite IMF assistance. If they wanted to be left alone, all they have to do is do nothing. If IMF loans didn't have strings attached, they wouldn't be able to borrow money, as it's those strings which build bond investor confidence. The entire point of IMF assistance is to avoid being cutoff from international borrowing for being horrible credit risks (again). The root cause of national debt problems is primarily government corruption, but also mismanagement, often at the behest of populist politics that excuse economic policy failures by, e.g., scapegoating outside forces. The US isn't immune to this problem, either, it just happens that the US had, albeit intermittently, long enough runs of solid financial management (e.g. Hamilton during the Founding) that it could grow an economic base that could withstand intermittent periods of mismanagement without the entire economy collapsing (yet). Even when a country is dealt a really crappy hand at the outset, it's not irreversible. Haiti is the poster child for crushing debt unfairly imposed by foreign powers, yet the Dominican Republic had the same history, but managed to overcome it. In some instances, interventions blamed for keeping Haiti oppressed were precisely what helped the Dominican Republic flourish. Likewise, nobody hears about the IMF success stories, just the failures; and it's not because the former don't exist or are rare.
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  > Even when a country is dealt a really crappy hand at the outset, it's not irreversible Hong Kong was poor until 1965, when they got tired of poverty and switched to free markets. The result was amazing prosperity.
  - unmole 9mo ago
    > switched to free markets Hong Kong has been all about free markets since the end of the Opium Wars.
- crossroadsguy 9mo ago
  > Countries invite IMF assistance. If they wanted to be left alone, all they have to do is do nothing …. Right. Countries that were stripped of anything and everything (lit-fucking-rally) and then left to fend for themselves when it suited the looters, they were enslaved (in every sense), "do" these things, "invite" these things! Yup. That's exactly what happens. Just the blacks in USA and the browns in the Indian Subcontinent are backward because they "invite" those backwardness, all they have to do is stand on their feet, and how it is spelled around the West, "pull their weight". So it is. Ffs!
  - lyu07282 9mo ago
    It is kind of fascinating how the rhetoric shifted from the 'white mans burden' and scientific racism of colonialism to the modern day liberal international order with their purpose built institutions and their 'nobel prize in economics'. Like today it's: of course we buy coffee and cocoa beans for cheap from them, transport them and add 500% of the value to the final product, that's just how economics works, are you stupid? The 'its just in their blood, it's nature' became 'its just economics 101', it just happens to keep them under our crushing boot, it's nature. The contradictions are wild.
- lyu07282 9mo ago
  > government corruption > mismanagement > populist politics > interventions blamed for keeping Haiti oppressed were precisely what helped the Dominican Republic flourish The rhetoric transitioned into exactly this, instead of believing they were subhuman uncivilized people we needed to save from themselves (the white mans burden), it seamlessly transitioned into neoliberal ideas of sound economic theory seeking a "scientific" rationalization of why those neoliberal policies forced onto them fail them consistently and how it's actually all their fault. Any sovereignty is reframed into dangerous intolerable "populism" that needs to be crushed by any means necessary, including crushing sanctions and blockades (stop hitting yourself), covert actions, coups and military interventions.

graemep 9mo ago

> Europe was entering the Dark Ages The "dark ages" never happened the way it is imagined in pop-culture. There was a genuine decline at the fringes, which includes Britain which maybe why it was so ingrained in Anglophone culture, but also history written by imperialists like Gibbon who thought the decline of Empires an intrinsically bad and regressive thing. The Eastern Roman Empire went on, the western broke up into successor states. Some things got worse, some things got better, there was progress made (especially for women and people at the bottom like slaves), and the early medieval period laid the foundations for progress later on. > Muhammad was having his visions Is that a bad thing? I know less about the history of that region than some others, but I think you need to look at prior conditions in places such as the Arabian peninsula to assess that.

reactordev 9mo ago
>"Is that a bad thing?" I think they were just setting the Age of Man here. Time framing it in history so others would know when we are talking about. It's fine.
helterskelter 9mo ago
The European Dark Ages was also a narrative largely invented by the Renaissance, which was trying to distinguish itself from what came before. Material wellbeing did improve overall, but that was because a huge portion of the population was killed off from the plague, freeing up tons of resources.
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  The Dark Ages were a period after the Romans left Europe where there are little to zero records of what went on then.
  - helterskelter 9mo ago
    Depends on who you ask, it's sometimes used to refer to as late as the 1400's.
    - anthk 9mo ago
      It wasn't a straight jump from Columbus or the Iberian unification, the Enlightenment and the late Middle Ages overlap a lot. I'd say from 1200's things began to 'instituonalize', from first proto-parliaments, to Iberian Fueros, to different merchants and thinkerers eroding the Ancient Regime a little by supporting capable people with the money of rich people (Maecenas? in Latin).
pessimizer 9mo ago
> The "dark ages" never happened the way it is imagined in pop-culture. They definitely did. Books stopped being published, even the slightest deviation from the ideas of an all-powerful church and nobility would be progressively punished by censors, mutilation, or execution, and basic reasoning skills atrophied in service of weird nonsense theological arguments that make current postmodern academic culture look reasonable. We don't know what normal people were doing, technology advanced at a snail's pace, we don't even know where many cities and towns were located. We know far more about the Romans and the Greeks than we know about some parts of Dark Age Europe. We're very lucky that some sense of religious nostalgia for the Classical age (from the fact that the Christian religion was an outgrowth of the late Roman state) kept them from losing or destroying all of the knowledge and documents of antiquity. The Western world was saved from 1000 years of stupidity by the Protestants. It wasn't that they were geniuses, but that they thought that there was some value to the individual other than service to the imbred descendants of Roman generals. This reinvented the concepts of philosophical disagreement and intellectual productivity in Europe. The "there was no Dark Ages" revision is from people who would love to take us back to the Dark Ages. Nostalgic for the rule of elites, unfettered by the opinions of a population kept uneducated and on the edge of starvation. People associate the slaver culture of the US South with hillbillies, but they associated themselves, with their elaborate gowns and ballrooms, with a renewal of European culture, with the slaves playing the part of the serfs. Catholicism is the only reason we didn't reach our current level of technical and intellectual development 1000 years ago. Somehow, with their weakness, Catholics have generally become far more intellectually sound than the psychopathic libertarian elites that own us now. Their nihilism and narcissism will end up giving us another 1000 years of darkness. We've gone from a history described entirely in terms of nobles arguing with and sleeping with each other to a present entirely described in terms of oligarchs arguing with and sleeping with each other. The last few hundred years will one day probably be described as the "Popular Period." Historians will describe it as the short span of history in which it is trivially easy to find the price of a loaf of bread, or the rules of card games. "At least 20% of the commercial writings from that period have survived."
- pqtyw 9mo ago
  > even the slightest deviation from the ideas of an all-powerful church and nobility would be progressively punished by censors, mutilation, or execution Medieval Christian societies were by and large certainly less brutal than ancient Greek and Roman states which were based on conquest and subjugation and extreme exploitation of slave labour. While admittedly some things did regress we have to thank Christianity for introducing the concept of universal human right (at least on a basic level) which is not something that existed in any shape or form back in e.g. 0 AD. > basic reasoning skills atrophied in service of weird nonsense theological arguments Scientific method was pretty much invented in Christian universities. Of course the model they were operating on was "somewhat" flawed but the methods they invented to reason about it were certainly a stepping stone to > Greeks than we know about some parts of Dark Age Europe Yes there was an ~200-300 year gap. > 1000 years of stupidity by the Protestants The same people who brought back witching burning (coincidentally a wide spread ancient Roman practice which the church tried to stamp out with various degrees of effort and success during most of the early to high middle ages)? > Catholicism is the only reason we didn't reach our current level of technical and intellectual development 1000 years ago. lol... let's not get silly. Just how much technological progress do you think there was between e.g. ~ 300 BC and 400 AD? It was clearly much less rapid than e.g. between 1000 and 1400 AD.
pqtyw 9mo ago
There was a collapse though. The plague, climate change and warfare lead to significant population declines. Especially in Italy.
- lurk2 9mo ago
  You are referring to the Black Death and that didn’t occur until around 350 years after the end of what are colloquially known as the Dark Ages.
  - whobre 9mo ago
    There was also The Plague of Justinian in the 6th century which may have been more devastating than the Black Death.
  - pqtyw 9mo ago
    So you both can read other people's minds yet are also entirely ignorant about major well known historical events? Fascinating.
thisislife2 9mo ago
They probably meant that Muhammad was on his way to become a prophet and a future leader who would lay the foundation of the Islamic empires that would span around most of the world (while at the same time, Europe's decline had begin).
tsoukase 9mo ago
From the peak-civilization of Ancient Greeks a steady slow decline started and continued until the calamity of 5th cent AD. Pick your start of middle ages sometime there. For a very long time a dark cloud was hiding the sun of wisdom until the scientific and other conquests came over. Pick your end there. All that in the Western part of the world...

WalterBright 9mo ago

> something comparable to what the Roman Empire had done Not in sophistication. For examples: The Pantheon - https://www.pantheonroma.com/en/pantheon-history/ https://www.pantheonroma.com/en/pantheon-history/ There are no domes in Mayan architecture. The aquaducts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct The romans mastered the arch. The Mayans never used them. Roman iron and steel - the Mayans used copper and gold. Roman ships had keels - Mayan ships did not. Cannot sail upwind without keels. Romans used the wheel - Mayans did not. Romans used papyrus for writing, and would send letters around the empire - the Mayans wrote on bark. And so on.

gwerbin 9mo ago
This only makes it even more fascinating. A Bronze Age civilization, contemporaneous with Charlemagne!
- lobf 9mo ago
  I mean, only because they weren’t outcompeted by an old world civilization yet.
- adrian_b 9mo ago
  It should be noted that while in general metallurgy was less advanced in America, there also was a domain where it was more advanced than in the rest of the world. There is one metal that has been discovered by the South-American natives, before the contact with Europe, and which was unknown elsewhere: platinum. The Europeans have learned from them about platinum. Moreover, not only the South-Americans had discovered platinum, but they had also developed a technology to make objects of platinum. This is no small achievement, because platinum was impossible to melt or forge with the means available at that time. The South-Americans had worked around this, by inventing a form of powder metallurgy. To make things of platinum, they sintered platinum powder and nuggets with gold. This technology has been lost after the Spanish occupation, so the Europeans have developed techniques for platinum processing only much later, around the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. While platinum itself had been unknown in the rest of the world before the contact with South America, some platinum-group metals had been known, i.e. the natural alloy of osmium with iridium was known in the ancient Egypt, Greece and Roman Empire, in the form of nuggets that were mixed with those of gold in alluvial deposits. However none of the ancient Mediterranean people discovered any method for forging or melting the Os-Ir nuggets, so they were called "adamant", i.e. "untamed" (which has been distorted in the modern "diamond"). This was the original meaning of adamant/diamond. Only after the wars of Alexander the Great in India, the Europeans have learned about what are now called "diamonds", which were then named by the Greeks and Romans "Indian diamonds", to distinguish them from the Os-Ir diamonds. Later, the knowledge about Os-Ir nuggets has been forgotten and the references to them in Hesiod, Platon or Pliny the Elder have been mistranslated until now.
  - yread 9mo ago
    Do you have any references? Most of the keywords from your comment only lead google to back this comment
    - adrian_b 9mo ago
      I have mentioned these things precisely because they are very little known by the general public and even by those who are supposed to be professionals in such domains. Because of this, references are scarce. References about the platinum technology in South America before the arrival of the Europeans: "Ancient Platinum Technology in South America, its use by the indians in pre-hispanic times", by David A. Scott and Warwick Bray, Institute of Archaeology, University of London, 1980. "Metallurgy of Gold and Platinum among the Pre-Columbian Indians", Nature, 1936. About the knowledge of the natural osmium-iridium alloy in the ancient Mediterranean world, there are several archaeology articles with chemical analyses of Egyptian gold artifacts, most of which contain as inclusions small nuggets of osmium-iridium alloy, whose cause is the fact that the gold was collected from river deposits, where the gold nuggets and the Os-Ir nuggets accumulate together, so when the gold was melted it incorporated the Os-Ir nuggets. (For instance: "The analysis of platinum-group element inclusions in gold antiquities", N.D. Meeksa, M.S. Titea, a British Museum Research Laboratory, London WC1B 3DG, England) These archaeological finds match perfectly the description of adamant from Plato (in "Timaeus" and in "The Statesman"), where adamant is described as the "knot of gold", which is found together with gold, but it cannot be shaped like gold, because it is too hard and impossible to melt. The same description of adamant is provided by Pliny the Elder in his tenth book, which adds besides it the description of the Indian adamants, which are completely different from the classical adamant, being octahedral crystals, not metal nuggets, which matches what are now called diamonds. The earliest reference to "adamant" is at Hesiod, who describes how Gaia has made a sickle blade from "grey adamant", for the castration of Uranus, which makes no sense as a reference to modern diamonds, which are neither grey nor suitable to be forged into a blade, but it makes perfect sense as a reference to the grey Os-Ir alloy, the hardest metal known to Hesiod, which humans were too weak to forge, but surely a huge goddess like Gaia should be able to forge. Other references to Os-Ir adamant are in Aeschylus (Prometheus is bound with chains made of adamant; another use that makes perfect sense for a metal, but which would be impossible for fragile diamond crystals, which cannot be forged into chain links) and in Theophrastus. There are a few other articles about the history of platinum and platinum-group metals that have relevant information about all these things, but I do not remember now the titles or authors. The fact that by searching the Internet you can find a lot of incomplete or even completely incorrect information about many things proves that one should never trust the answers given by an LLM for any really important question, because an LLM will provide the information most likely to be found in its training sources, while truth cannot be based on democracy. On the contrary, much too frequently the majority opinion is more likely to be incorrect, than the minority opinion.
dyauspitr 9mo ago
To be fair, the Romans had so many cultures they could draw their technology from- the Chinese, the Indians, the Middle East, etc. The Roman Empire was kind of a group project with three or four groups. The Mayans were essentially isolated on their continent.
leodler 9mo ago
Doesn't seem nearly as black and white when you consider the Mayans were themselves way ahead of all of Europe with their use of elastomers, effectively creating vulcanized rubber over a thousand years before Charles Goodyear. Hard to consider this that sophisticated in the twenty-first century but their use of the number zero also predates Europe by hundreds of years. The Palenque also contains both aqueducts and arches (though not used together in the Roman style): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque#Palace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque#Palace
- jatora 9mo ago
  still seems pretty black and white to me lol
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  The Mayans used the corbeled vault, which is much more primitive than the arch. There's a reason people who invented arches never went back to the corbeled vault. Compare any of the Mayan buildings with the Roman Coliseum in sophistication. I've been through Chichen Itza and spent some time looking closely at the construction of it and the neighboring buildings. I encourage you to do the same. The Roman "style" of aqueducts used arches so they could cross valleys while maintaining a constant slope. I don't think the Mayans had that, and the Mayan aqueducts didn't seem to be very long, like 200 feet vs the Roman miles long ones. The Romans also had hypocausts, which were a method of piping in heated air under the floor to warm the house.
  - anthk 9mo ago
    The Medieval Iberia still used similar conducts to heat the cities and villages. It's impressive how much of the Roman empire (from the street layouts to home architecture) into the cities.
  - jazz9k 9mo ago
    What you are getting at is that Rome had a more advanced and intelligent civilization. Nobody wants to admit that all cultures past and present are not the same.

aorloff 9mo ago

I've been to the Pantheon and I've been to Saqsaywaman (Inca) The pantheon is amazing and I can see how humans built it Saqsaywaman is amazing and I have no idea how the hell it was done, even with today's machinery you don't see stones joined like that

jxnsbdbd 9mo ago
Joining stones in that way is very common in highway construction Sure it was much more expensive back then to find matching stones than now with laser measuring and computer predication But it's basically the same process
nkrisc 9mo ago
> I have no idea how the hell it was done, even with today's machinery you don't see stones joined like that Skilled tradesmen with lots of time. It’s impressive, but it’s nothing magical.
- roughly 9mo ago
  I think it was Teller who said the secret to a good magic trick was to put in so much effort that no reasonable person would assume that’s what you’d done.
  - aorloff 9mo ago
    If you wanted to join a bunch of stones so well that there were no seams, using manual labor, would you pick shapes like these to confuse the hell out of future humans who would wonder how you did it with manual labor ? https://www.earthasweknowit.com/photo/peru_cusco_hatunrumiyoc_twelve-angled_stone https://www.earthasweknowit.com/photo/peru_cusco_hatunrumiyo... Because if its all just a giant magic trick to amaze us future humans, it worked.
    - roughly 9mo ago
      Humans have been artists and show offs as long as we’ve been human. I don’t know if the craftsman who cut that thought people a millennium later would still be impressed by it, but I’m sure they’d be happy as hell that we are.
- aorloff 9mo ago
  Check it out for yourself. Its magical
gus_massa 9mo ago
There is an article that was posted recently https://www.earthasweknowit.com/pages/inca_construction https://www.earthasweknowit.com/pages/inca_construction (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342950 | 172 points | 55 days ago | 46 comments) The most important bit is in the middle https://www.earthasweknowit.com/photo/peru_cusco_masonry_concave_bedding https://www.earthasweknowit.com/photo/peru_cusco_masonry_con... The stones were concave, so the match perfectly only outside and have some kind of mortar inside the wall.

wahern 9mo ago
I certainly didn't assign moral fault to anyone or any group. Indeed, framing it as a moral problem is, IMO, one of the problems here. A country isn't run like a business; similarly, collective morality doesn't look anything like individual morality, assuming it's even a thing at all. Corruption being a root cause for impoverishment is a fact. How corruption arises, and how to get out of that local equilibrium, is a difficult collective action problem without any easy answers, though there's countless books on political and economic development that explore it. Colonial oppression is a horrible explanation as it has very poor predictive power, unless you define colonialism in a conclusory, tautological way; and even then, it does zilch in terms of identifying effective solutions. Indeed, relying on an oppression narrative is one of the ways corrupt governments and elites justify and excuse the consequences of their policies. That said, "corruption" isn't a great explanation, either, but it's certainly better than the colonialism morality narrative. Unless someone has lived in some of these poorer countries and witnessed the extremes of corruption, they tend to equivocate all kinds of corruption, and when from wealthier, more democratic countries are unable to distinguish or even imagine what severe, pervasive corruption looks like and how it effects every aspect of society.
- lyu07282 9mo ago
  > A country isn't run like a business I'm not convinced you really mean that, but I agree they shouldn't. Although we've invaded countries that tried that (and are in the process of invading a few more while we are speaking). > though there's countless books on political and economic development that explore it we clearly have read very different books on the matter. What is the answer to corruption given by neoliberalism? Isn't the very policies enforced and implemented in the global south believed to combat corruption? Hasn't that demonstrably failed them? But people like me take issue with the whole corruption narrative, we would argue the west, especially the US is the most corrupt nation on the planet by scale, we just don't call that corruption, we just give it names like "lobbying" or "stock buy backs" and make it legal. > Colonial oppression is a horrible explanation as it has very poor predictive power You can see colonialism from space, with old rail lines and other infrastructure leading from the mines to the coastal cities, it literally shaped their geography, their colonial history is the single most important unimaginable violent event that has ever happened to these nations, its inseparable, it shapes their past, present and future. It has absolutely predictive power, it shaped them and our grasp on them to this very day is undeniable reality for those nations. > unless you define colonialism in a conclusory, tautological way We absolutely have to study colonialism as a distinct, special thing, we need to understand how this legacy shaped them and our(western) relationship to them to this day. We didn't just pack our bags and left them alone. Everyone recognizes that, it's not like we don't care, we do all kinds of things in development, its just we should observe why this all made so little progress despite 75 years, billions in aid and one failed IDF program after the other. > relying on an oppression narrative is one of the ways corrupt governments and elites justify and excuse the consequences of their policies you could say the same about the corruption narrative, it ignores things like effects of globalism and military interventionism too, and has served our own elites VERY well. > That said, "corruption" isn't a great explanation, either ... I don't get the point in your last paragraph

gilleain 9mo ago
> The same people who brought back witching burning Seems like it was more complex than that : > Authors have debated whether witch trials were more intense in Catholic or Protestant regions; however, the intensity had not so much to do with Catholicism or Protestantism, as both regions experienced a varied intensity of witchcraft persecutions. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period#Peak_of_the_trials:_1560%E2%80%931630 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_mode... Then : > The Witch Trials of Trier took place in the independent Catholic diocese of Trier in the Holy Roman Empire in present day Germany ... Between 1587 and 1593, 368 people were burned alive for sorcery in twenty-two villages, and in 1588, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant in each From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_witch_trials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_witch_trials However: > The son of a Puritan minister, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder in March 1644 and lasted until his retirement in 1647. Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne sent more accused people to be hanged for witchcraft than all the other witch-hunters in England of the previous 160 years From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Hopkins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Hopkins Note that in Scotland and England, witches were hanged, not burned.
- pqtyw 9mo ago
  Generally it seems it was mostly in areas where Catholicism and Protestantism were in close contact and had compete for believers or in protestant dominated areas. The Spanish inquisition for the most pairt maintained the medieval view that witchcraft could not exist from a theological perspective and continued prosecuting belief in it as a heresy. I'm not defending the church, though. They declared witchcraft to be an irrational superstition to delegitimize pagan beliefs a few centuries earlier yet had no qualms about embracing the same beliefs to gain a competitive edge when competing against protestants.

WalterBright 9mo ago

The Mayan discovering platinum and maybe working it a bit had no perceptible effect on their civilization, if only because a few bits of it did not provide an opportunity to use it. Iron and steel, on the other hand, are transformative to civilization and the Romans made extensive use of it. For example, nails make it easy to build wooden structures. (Gold and silver are also rather useless for pre-industrial civilizations, as they are not strong enough. Their usage was confined to decoration and currency.)

adrian_b 9mo ago
Platinum was worked mainly in the territory of present Colombia and Ecuador. Some jewelry may have been traded until North America, but they would have been certainly rare by the Mayan. Because the South-Americans did not have iron or iron alloys, but they had rather abundant gold and silver and platinum, the usage of precious metals was not confined to decoration and currency. For instance the use of nails made of gold-copper-silver alloy was frequent and also various tools were made from such a gold-copper-silver alloy (named "tumbaga" by the Spaniards). Pure gold, silver or copper are extremely soft, but their alloys can have a decent strength, even if not comparable to steel. The discovery of platinum in South America had a significant impact on the entire human civilization. Initially the Spaniards have despised the metal because, unlike for the gold and silver that they took back to Europe, nobody would give anything in exchange for the unknown platinum, and they also did not know how to work the metal into useful things. Hence the Spanish name of the metal, "platina", as a diminutive of "plata", i.e. silver, as at that time it was much less valuable than silver. Nevertheless, platinum samples have been taken back to Europe, and eventually, in the middle of the 18th century they have arisen the curiosity of the chemists, who began to study its properties. After it was established that platinum is an ideal material for vessels used in chemical research, due to its resistance to chemical reagents and high temperatures, platinum has played an exceedingly important role in chemistry around the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century, i.e. during the time when the majority of the chemical elements have been discovered, frequently during analyses performed in platinum vessels. Other early important use of platinum was for the standards of mass and of length of the metric system, which ensured an accuracy and reproducibility of the measurements much better than anything before that.
- WalterBright 9mo ago
  Interesting information about platinum, but I don't see evidence that platinum had any effect on the Maya civilization. Google sez: "The Maya did not use metal nails for construction" They used obsidian and chert for crafting & cutting. I'm not seeing the Maya making much use of metals.