Some Maya rulers may have taken generations to attract subjects

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/maya-rulers-attract-subjects-guatemala-tamarindito

by drdee • 4 years ago

75 43 4 years ago

lalos• 4 years ago

My guess is whoever paid attention to the stars/sky and deciphered solstices could get enough knowledge to start being seen as a holy man. You are able to predict seasons and plan agriculture, etc. Add some secrecy in the mix and you have multi-generational power structures.

Jerrrry• 4 years ago

plan agriculture

this is the big one; the reason shaman/priests were at the top of the hierarchy in all post-agrarian cultures is because knowing when to plant seeds was the most crucial societal role in changing from hunter-gatherer to domestic agricultural, fueling population density and allowing even more specialized roles.

krapp• 4 years ago

My guess is whoever paid attention to the stars/sky and deciphered solstices could get enough knowledge to start being seen as a holy man

Persian astologer-priests were literally the magi from which the word magic is derived, so yes.

eternalban2• 4 years ago

Persian astologer-priests were literally the magi from which the word magic is derived, so yes.

True. [Well, they were actually Medes, Iranian astrologer-priests is more accurate.]

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/Magi

The Magi were one of the tribes of Medes and the designated priestly tribe (think Levi). And likely from exposure of Medes (possibly Kurds of today) to Mesopotamian cultural centers, specially Babylon, the Iranian tribes got into astrology and astronomy. The Iranians started out as nomadic herding tribes (Abel) before settling (Cain) and adopting urbanism in what is now called The Iranian Plateau.

So we Iranians (Medes or Persians) did not invent astrology - we almost certainly got that from Babylon and to this day our calendar is the Zodiac, of four season with 3 months each, commencing on Spring Equinox. For example Khordad (3rd month of spring) is Gemini.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac

"Around the end of the 5th century BC, Babylonian astronomers divided the ecliptic into 12 equal "signs", by analogy to 12 schematic months of 30 days each."

This, imo, is where the 12 sons of Jacob (tribes of Israel) and the 12 Imams of Shia come from. All this numerology fascination is Babylonian in origin (though possibly they themselves got it from Egypt).

soledades4• 4 years ago

"attract subjects"

that's an interesting little phraseology/unsubstantiated theory of state, especially coming from a science publication. typically, you "subject" subjects, hence the word.

alternatively, if the redundancy bothers you, you can subject populaces instead.

crooked-v• 4 years ago

The article is specifically about the leadership in question willingly attracting people to rule over rather than forcibly subjecting them to rulership.

soledades4• 4 years ago

yes, that is the premise, but the article specifically does not present any evidence of that being the case, just a bunch of weasel words.

"...aerial laser maps reported by Estrada-Belli and colleagues have revealed large, interconnected Maya cities now obscured by forests in other parts of northern Guatemala (SN: 9/27/18). The next step, Estrada-Belli says, is to assemble an aerial laser map of at least 100 square kilometers around Tamarindito to see if it was built in relative isolation."

if they don't even know whether it was built in isolation, how could they possibly be in a position to make these kind of conclusions about how it came about?

hence, "theory."

jerry1979• 4 years ago

typically, you "subject" subjects, hence the word.

That seems like an appeal to linguistic authority.

I have a hard time imagining building a hierarchy without an attraction phase. There are many real world examples: Jim Jones, Uber, the French Revolution, etc.

lazide• 4 years ago

So you never heard of a population being conquered?

soledades4• 4 years ago

failure of imagination is not an argument either FWIW

shadowofneptune• 4 years ago

Terms which were coined in Norman feudalism will need some stretching to adapt to different cultures and political systems. The judges in the Book of Judges aren't anything like a judge in our sense, for example.

soledades4• 4 years ago

It's a pretty universal fact of history that civilizations come about through violence and subjugation, not by "the law of attraction," or whatever this article is proposing.

golemotron2• 4 years ago

Why is it "Maya rulers" rather than "Mayan rulers"?

alistairSH• 4 years ago

Generally, Maya refers to the people and culture, while Mayan is the language.

He is Maya. They are Maya. Maya ruins. Maya clothing.

Mayan languages (30 odd ancient, plus one currently spoken in the Yucatan region).

golemotron2• 4 years ago

I disapprove. It should be changed to match the adjective form of other countries or regions like Singapore/Singaporean, Mexico, Mexican.

theGnuMe2• 4 years ago

eh? If we are now saying he is Maya vs Mayan, well news to me. He is America. America clothing. America buildings.

kgwgk• 4 years ago

“Generally” as in “scholars specifically”.

googlryas• 4 years ago

Would this be like how Jesus amassed followers? A few dozen in 30 AD, maybe 5000 70 years later, but then 2 million 150 years after that?

dzink• 4 years ago

The Byzantine emperor Constantine made it go viral around 300AD. He had a lot of attacks from external tribes on the leftovers of the Roman empire and a religion that teaches you to turn the other cheek was very helpful to adopt as a national religion. Then around 1050AD Catholicism split from Orthodoxy and if you were a ruler you got to pick between being in the same club under the influence of the Pope (with his perks and manipulations) or being Tsar with a patriarch underneath you. Some Eastern European countries tried both ways and settled on Orthodoxy. Western Europe rulers intermarried instead, and fought between each-other with the occasional help of the Pope club. They all wanted to claim some shred of grander legitimacy as descendent of the Holy Roman empire and absorb others, but it didn’t work out.

Some Maya rulers may have taken generations to attract subjects

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