> The Maya Civilization, from Central America, was one of the most advanced ancient civilizations
The Maya are still around! I spent a few months in the Guatemalan highlands last year and all the kids in the village spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home.
(Young people speaking the language is key to language health.)
The Maya are still around, but the Maya civilization's institutions were all destroyed. And the Spanish made a point of seeking out all the Maya books [1] they could find and burning them. So a lot of knowledge was lost.
For this reason, one of the most fascinating historical relics to me are the Incan Quipu [0]. Not only because their logic appears to be 'proto-computational' (at the very least a very complex system of encoding numeric and narrative information through sequences of knots that were also used directly for calculations), but since, neither in the form of a valuable material like gold nor obviously a book to be destroyed, a large enough number survived to this day. There are few traces of the past we know exist that might contain everything from astronomical calculations to old social-institutional histories.
They're comparable in that sense to the Heculaneum manuscripts, which researchers have lately made great progress on with deep learning [1]. I hope an equivalent initiative someday starts on the Quipu.
Well, we could attempt to reconstruct it from history and similar landempires. We could take babylonian or russian history and transpose it into the language. Then recreate some superiority atrocity justification mythology ("gods chosen people"/"sinners-born-unpure"-must be purged.) Then we take all the tribes that sided with the spaniards, whose history they wiped out and invent some colorful horror-stories that other them. So, the spaniards of the new world getting trampeled by the old world, who brought gonorreha home,creating hyper puritan std ethics, voila.. nothing of value was lost.
I was surprised to find out that there are still many indigenous groups with populations in the millions. My California public education made it seem like they were all pretty much wiped out save for those who survived to the various reservation systems.
My favorite group is the Mapuche who managed to hold out against the Spaniards until they were conquered by Chile and Argentina in the late 19th century. They managed to thwart the conquistadors for centuries! It wasn’t until the modern era where military logistics got good enough to unseat them and overcome the advantages they had.
Even in the US, the Indian Wars weren't finished until the 1890s. In fact, most of the big wars against the Native Americans took place after the American Civil War. One of the big faults I have with US history in the education system is that it tends to front-load the depiction of Native Americans in the Precolonial portion of history, with an echo in the Trail of Tears and forced migration in the 1830s, and largely edits them out of the history of the settling of the west, despite this process requiring a very violent dispossession of the existing inhabitants.
This is also a difference in outcomes between traditional colonialism (where indigenous people were viewed as a source of labor) and settler colonialism (where indigenous people are viewed simply as "in the way"). That's not to say that traditional colonialism is in any way acceptable, however.
Relatively (adjusted by area and duration) not that many people from Spain moved to the Americas between 1500 and ~1800, especially compared to the British colonies in North America.
So they couldn't murder/expel (unlike the British/American colonists) most of the native population (especially considering that North America was much less densely inhabited to begin with) if they wanted someone to work in the mines and plantation (again relatively not that many slaves were imported to the mainland colonies as well).
France was similar (except they struggled even more with getting enough people to move to the colonies).
I was just in Silver Spring MD, just outside of Washington, DC, and I noticed that all those kids moved from Guatamala to DC! The American dream! All the kids in Silver Spring spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home. We need more Kaqchikel-speaking children in the Silver Spring area to add to diversity, so that it's not just a primarily Spanish-speaking-only area, but a Spanish-and-Kaqchikel speaking area.
That is not that simple. They never invented the wheel, the Maya calendar cycled over 5128, which is not really convenient, numeric system was also rather uncomfortable, strange numerals working in 19-base system (but they have invented zero). In addition to that they've invented sadistic religion with human sacrifices and their culture was very aggressive, what finally put Maya civilization to an end, as everyone around happily joined European conquerors to get rid of Mayans ASAP.
> In addition to that they've invented sadistic religion with human sacrifices and their culture was very aggressive, what finally put Maya civilization to an end, as everyone around happily joined European conquerors to get rid of Mayans ASAP
That was the Aztec, an entirely different culture from the Mayans. The Mayan Kingdoms lasted until 1697.
The Mayans and the Amazon cultures more generally have been shown to have created monumental walkways and structures that we are only now uncovering form the jungle growth via lidar. The idea that they were technologically backwards is far out of date.
They had the wheel, they just didn't find many practical uses for it without having either beasts of burden or nice relatively flat paved roads.
Wheels are great if you have something stronger than a human to pull it, or you only have to move it a short distance, or if you have a hard paved road. But pulling carts or wagons or wheelbarrows through rough terrain or muddy roads with just human power is absolute trash and not worth the effort, and moving things over small short distances alone isn't worth the specialized labor and cost of making decent wheel and axle systems without machine tools.
If you are still unsure, ask yourself why hikers and campers don't pull a cart or push a wheelbarrow everywhere they go instead of using a backpack even though they can have ultra light aluminum construction with pneumatic tires and ball bearing axles. All the effort you would save by using a wheelbarrow on smooth parts of your path would be undone by just a handful of random sticks or rocks you run into with it along the way.
The sad thing is that for all their advanced ways of the time, they succumbed to the same thing we are experiencing now... being too comfortable to fix what's broken.
The Mayans did not want to give up their lifestyles even in the face of crippling population growth and surrounding natural resource depletion... which led to their downfall.
From newish imaging. We can see the impressions of vast jungle swaths cut down and way made for planting food and houses. This looks to have disrupted the water cycle enough to cause cinotes (underground water systems and only source of drinking water) to deplete. We see sacrificial remnants below the modern water line. Their water disappeared and so did their civilization. By the time the Spanish arrived, the local people had no knowledge of how to build nor maintain their now ancient cities, the jungles regrew, water came back, and sacrificial artifacts were covered by replenished water levels.
They are an example of man made effects on local weather leading to the downfall of an advanced civilization.
Didn't the Spanish show up briefly, then come back in force later?
I've heard some speculate that this introduced European diseases, and unlike many Native American tribes, the Mayans lived in dense cities. Such disease would spread like wildfire.
(Certainly, some disease made it the other way too! Tuberculosis and syphilis are examples)
I've heard numbers like 95% died, and it was decades between first contact and serious conquest.
That leaves a lot of time for people to grow up with no one to teach them trades, or even how to read.
If we lost 95% of our population, so many active skills would be lost.
Sounds like the opposite no? Since we are going through population collapse in a time of abundance.
Does make me wonder what the political dynamics were at the time, whether some could see problems but weren't in power to change things. Or maybe they couldn't understand or figure out solutions to the problems.
What I'd give to be a multilingual fly on the wall throughout history.
The origins of the 260 day ritual year are not known for certain, but there are a couple of hypotheses:
1. Pregnancy. 260 days is roughly the gestation period of a baby, so this may have been the inspiration for tracking this duration. (For what it is worth, modern Maya timekeepers cite this as being the reason for the length of the 260 day ritual calendar.)
2. In the tropics there are two days of the year when the Sun passes through the zenith and objects cast no shadows. In the latitude where the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations emerged, the length of time between these two days of the year is about 260 days.
3. Numerology. 260 is the product of 20 and 13. 20 was significant in Mesoamerican culture because it was the base of their numbering system and was associated with the human body (given that we have 20 fingers and toes). And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos. So the number 260 represented a kind of interlocking between the human and the cosmic.
It's also worth noting that the Maya also tracked a 365 solar cycle, so they did have a concept of a more standard kind of "year." The 365 cycle was used for civil purposes. The 260 day ritual cycle was used more for divination.
(Shameless plug, but if you want to learn more about Mesoamerican astronomy I have a podcast about the history of astronomy and I talked about it on the last episode: https://songofurania.com/episode/047)
This reminds me a bit of how the Islamic calendar year is 355 days and doesn't have intercalation for religious reasons (many calendars insert extra months now and then to realign with the year, but the Islamic calendar does not). This is why Ramadan always seems to be at different times of year when you hear about it.
> And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos.
Any reason number 13, of all numbers, has been so significant in different parts of the world, sometimes associated with completely opposite meanings (e.g., between Jews and Persians/Europeans)?
Readit News
The Maya are still around! I spent a few months in the Guatemalan highlands last year and all the kids in the village spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home.
(Young people speaking the language is key to language health.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices
They're comparable in that sense to the Heculaneum manuscripts, which researchers have lately made great progress on with deep learning [1]. I hope an equivalent initiative someday starts on the Quipu.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu [1] https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/
My favorite group is the Mapuche who managed to hold out against the Spaniards until they were conquered by Chile and Argentina in the late 19th century. They managed to thwart the conquistadors for centuries! It wasn’t until the modern era where military logistics got good enough to unseat them and overcome the advantages they had.
So they couldn't murder/expel (unlike the British/American colonists) most of the native population (especially considering that North America was much less densely inhabited to begin with) if they wanted someone to work in the mines and plantation (again relatively not that many slaves were imported to the mainland colonies as well).
France was similar (except they struggled even more with getting enough people to move to the colonies).
I asked for directions and just got blank stares until someone who spoke Spanish in the village explained, lol.
That was the Aztec, an entirely different culture from the Mayans. The Mayan Kingdoms lasted until 1697.
Wheels are great if you have something stronger than a human to pull it, or you only have to move it a short distance, or if you have a hard paved road. But pulling carts or wagons or wheelbarrows through rough terrain or muddy roads with just human power is absolute trash and not worth the effort, and moving things over small short distances alone isn't worth the specialized labor and cost of making decent wheel and axle systems without machine tools.
If you are still unsure, ask yourself why hikers and campers don't pull a cart or push a wheelbarrow everywhere they go instead of using a backpack even though they can have ultra light aluminum construction with pneumatic tires and ball bearing axles. All the effort you would save by using a wheelbarrow on smooth parts of your path would be undone by just a handful of random sticks or rocks you run into with it along the way.
The Mayans did not want to give up their lifestyles even in the face of crippling population growth and surrounding natural resource depletion... which led to their downfall.
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/77060/mayan-def...
From newish imaging. We can see the impressions of vast jungle swaths cut down and way made for planting food and houses. This looks to have disrupted the water cycle enough to cause cinotes (underground water systems and only source of drinking water) to deplete. We see sacrificial remnants below the modern water line. Their water disappeared and so did their civilization. By the time the Spanish arrived, the local people had no knowledge of how to build nor maintain their now ancient cities, the jungles regrew, water came back, and sacrificial artifacts were covered by replenished water levels.
They are an example of man made effects on local weather leading to the downfall of an advanced civilization.
I've heard some speculate that this introduced European diseases, and unlike many Native American tribes, the Mayans lived in dense cities. Such disease would spread like wildfire.
(Certainly, some disease made it the other way too! Tuberculosis and syphilis are examples)
I've heard numbers like 95% died, and it was decades between first contact and serious conquest.
That leaves a lot of time for people to grow up with no one to teach them trades, or even how to read.
If we lost 95% of our population, so many active skills would be lost.
Is the weather in the tropics so similar that year-on-year mismatch stops mattering?
1. Pregnancy. 260 days is roughly the gestation period of a baby, so this may have been the inspiration for tracking this duration. (For what it is worth, modern Maya timekeepers cite this as being the reason for the length of the 260 day ritual calendar.)
2. In the tropics there are two days of the year when the Sun passes through the zenith and objects cast no shadows. In the latitude where the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations emerged, the length of time between these two days of the year is about 260 days.
3. Numerology. 260 is the product of 20 and 13. 20 was significant in Mesoamerican culture because it was the base of their numbering system and was associated with the human body (given that we have 20 fingers and toes). And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos. So the number 260 represented a kind of interlocking between the human and the cosmic.
It's also worth noting that the Maya also tracked a 365 solar cycle, so they did have a concept of a more standard kind of "year." The 365 cycle was used for civil purposes. The 260 day ritual cycle was used more for divination.
(Shameless plug, but if you want to learn more about Mesoamerican astronomy I have a podcast about the history of astronomy and I talked about it on the last episode: https://songofurania.com/episode/047)
Any reason number 13, of all numbers, has been so significant in different parts of the world, sometimes associated with completely opposite meanings (e.g., between Jews and Persians/Europeans)?
That's the explanation?