Archaeologists Discover Lost Civilization in Guatemala

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3admdv/archaeologists-discover-huge-lost-civilization-in-guatemala

by 8bitsrule • 4 years ago

156 34 4 years ago

vice.com

Herodotus38• 4 years ago

Obligatory direct link to the paper:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/...

blakesterz• 4 years ago

There are some really cool images there.

gordondavidf• 4 years ago

+1 to this. Strongly recommend a glance of the paper for the images.

Gabriel_Martin2• 4 years ago

I find LiDAR scanning through canopies super fascinating, but I ended up going down a different rabbit hole while reading this. I found the petition linked below after a cursory look into the doctor of archeology mentioned within this article. I wonder how this work fits into the aspirations mentioned within it.

To me that petition brought up thoughts about how one might manage projects like this with respect to local population, and if/how efforts like this can aspire to maximize positive impacts for local populations, relating to economic mobility. It also brought up concerns about the worst parts of colonialism/neo-colonialism, namely the looting and suppression of local populations for the economic interests of foreign or state related interests. I wonder how the archeologist in question changed his methodologies (if at all) in response to the petition.

https://www.change.org/p/society-for-american-archaeology-re...

AlotOfReading5• 4 years ago

I wish Hansen would go into a quiet retirement somewhere. He's notorious in the American archaeological community and frankly something of a political bogeyman for many of the political groups in Central America. He's been accused of everything from being involved with human/drug trafficking groups, to rigging elections, to pursuing shadowy mormon illuminati goals. He hasn't done any favors to his reputation by associating with unsavory individuals like Mel Gibson for funding and helping to produce whatever the hell Apocalypto was. The Mirador basin his project is named after is widely considered to be nonexistent and not an isolated geographic region in its own right.

I don't personally believe much of the stuff that's been said about him (having never met the guy) because it's so cartoonishly evil, but he's so politically radioactive that anything he might try to do to benefit local communities is never going to get their support.

throwawaylinux4• 4 years ago

Apocalypto was a fun movie, I liked it.

solardev• 4 years ago

Without any context, the bill that Hansen ~~is sponsoring~~ supposedly wrote is pretty terrifying in and of itself: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/313...

It's asking the US Congress to stick its tentacles further into Mexican and Guatemalan affairs, encouraging US investment for tourism and law enforcement.

Why are we meddling in their affairs and taking over their management?

joshuaheard• 4 years ago

If you disagree with his proposal, then lobby against it based on the merits. Trying to attack him personally by cancelling his professional membership is wrong.

Gabriel_Martin2• 4 years ago

I don't know why you'd assume my observations are an attack on him personally, or try to characterize me as cancelling him. Apparently he's somewhat noteworthy? I just shared related information I found interesting and comment worthy.

It feels you'd prefer I stifle my reflection on the petition I found and the thoughts I had? Seems a bit like being cancelled for not limiting my perspective to the proposal and commenting on anything related I'd read upon googling the people in the article.

ownlife• 4 years ago

Cool TED Talk on LiDAR - "Let's scan the whole planet with LiDAR"

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_fisher_let_s_scan_the_whole_...

YouTube link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rIUxHZ9f4

jonnycomputer• 4 years ago

I really don't like the title of this submission. It is unnecessarily sensationalist. And why link to Vice.com when there is an open paper you can link to instead [1]?

Here is the abstract of that paper:

LiDAR coverage of a large contiguous area within the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB) of northern Guatemala has identified a concentration of Preclassic Maya sites (ca. 1000 b.c.–a.d. 150) connected by causeways, forming a web of implied social, political, and economic interactions. This article is an introduction to one of the largest, contiguous, regional LiDAR studies published to date in the Maya Lowlands. More than 775 ancient Maya settlements are identified within the MCKB, and 189 more in the surrounding karstic ridge, which we condensed into 417 ancient cities, towns, and villages of at least six preliminary tiers based on surface area, volumetrics, and architectural configurations. Many tiered sites date to the Middle and Late Preclassic periods, as determined by archaeological testing, and volumetrics of contemporaneously constructed and/or occupied architecture with similar morphological characteristics. Monumental architecture, consistent architectural formats, specific site boundaries, water management/collection facilities, and 177 km of elevated Preclassic causeways suggest labor investments that defy organizational capabilities of lesser polities and potentially portray the strategies of governance in the Preclassic period. Settlement distributions, architectural continuities, chronological contemporaneity, and volumetric considerations of sites provide evidence for early centralized administrative and socio-economic strategies within a defined geographical region.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/...

groffee• 4 years ago

Lost to who? Ask the locals and they'll know all about it.

kshahkshah• 4 years ago

Exactly, my buddy who used to regularly visit Guatemala has paid drivers to bring him out to still-covered ruins and explore for the day. The locals know about this stuff.

college_physics2• 4 years ago

Yes but they dont have a fancy lidar so why bother.

Reminds me of this story (here simplified and from memory :-) about ancient Maya script that was deciphered once the brilliant code breakers had the inspiration to talk to the locals (who were still talking the script)

Jun8• 4 years ago

I know you say you’re describing from memory but wanted to comment in case other people read this comment and get the wrong idea: the decipherment of Maya writing was nothing like described here.

If you’re interested, a great popular account is given in Micheal Coe’s book Breaking the Maya Code or you can read an interview with David Stuart, who started work on Maya writing when he was ten! https://nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews/St...

UberFly• 4 years ago

Maybe "obscured by time" is a better description. Generally they know something was there, but the details and memories are as buried as the remnants of the place.

Jensson• 4 years ago

Everyone knows there are old sites there, they just discovered more of them.

rightbyte• 4 years ago

You are making it sound like Guatemala have no historical institutions ...

The low hanging fruit is picked.

zach_garwood• 4 years ago

It's sorta like how Christopher Columbus "discovered" a new world ... that 50 million people were already living on.

NelsonMinar• 4 years ago

If this interests you, read Charles Mann's book 1491. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491

8bitsrule• 4 years ago

Great book ... and so disorienting! Almost everything I thought I knew about the history of South America had to be completely revised. And the evidence was right there all the time, waiting for someone to decode it. Also recommend the sequel 1493.

I'll never take any 'historical fact' for granted again.

ks2048• 4 years ago

There's long been a serious problem with looting at Maya sites. I wonder how that affects what they publish with these surveys.

zeristor• 4 years ago

Strange I had just been listening to a podcast about China funding project in the Americas and it talked at length about building an expensive train line in Southern Mexico. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4kxr

It does seem strange that the US is making laws for territory in a foreign country.

Vice video about it: https://youtu.be/uiZZQhnGveE

Archaeologists Discover Lost Civilization in Guatemala

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