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> something comparable to what the Roman Empire had done Not in sophistication. For examples: The Pantheon - https://www.pantheonroma.com/en/pantheon-history/

> 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.

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.