Archaeologists Discover Lost Civilization in Guatemala | Hacker News Reader

Archaeologists Discover Lost Civilization in Guatemala

vice.com

156 points8bitsrule34 comments

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...

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.

Apocalypto was a fun movie, I liked it.

Hey, you do you.

Mayanists absolutely hate it for what I consider pretty decent reasons. Some historical inaccuracies would normally be tolerable, but Apocalypto's inaccuracies tend to dehumanize the Maya it depicts. Worse, it was produced less than a decade after an internationally recognized genocide in which modern Maya people were portrayed as bloodthirsty savages by propaganda using similar stereotypes. You can still find the old reviews from academics in various places like [1].

[1] https://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/02/apoc...

I don't think it portrays them that way at all. If it did claim to have any bearing on reality it shows good and bad. War and slavery and murder and atrocities by the ruling class down to foot soldiers.

I can watch movies fictional or not about Nazis, as well as Vietnam, Iraq, Cambodia and other western interventions and wars -- without thinking that somehow portrays white or European people as bloodthirsty savages. I think it's pretty infantilizing to think a movie like that is "problematic", doesn't surprise me to see this kind of ultra-PC high horsemanship coming from academia but I think their fanciful claims about the risk of hate crimes and neo nazis due this film are a load of unsubstantiated and unscientific claptrap that they're just making up.

The movie uses a modern Mayan language for dialogue, uses Maya actors and depicts a religion still practiced today. Moreover, practitioners of that religion were being actively killed for their practice only a decade prior. The analogy with nazis and europeans seems pretty different to me.

In the interest of having a more interesting discussion though, what would you require beyond the existing content of the film to consider it "problematic" (to use your word)?

> The movie uses a modern Mayan language for dialogue, uses Maya actors and depicts a religion still practiced today.

This was great, part of what made it fun for me was a bit of diversity in this kind of... I guess you could call it an action movie. What point are you trying to make?

> Moreover, practitioners of that religion were being actively killed for their practice only a decade prior.

Okay, still not sure how that relates to the movie.

> The analogy with nazis and europeans seems pretty different to me.

I think it's very apt.

> In the interest of having a more interesting discussion though, what would you require beyond the existing content of the film to consider it "problematic" (to use your word)?

I would require reasonable evidence as opposed to shrill baseless and unfalsifiable handwringing that alleged experts believe lends them gravitas and demand we swallow unquestioningly. I remember the exact same type of hysterics and misinformation peddling around the "video games cause mass shootings".

"Nazis and racists and oppression and terrorists and think of the children," and we're expected to shut off our capacity for rational thought. It's a tiresome and common last refuge of charlatans and grifters. Doesn't cut it for me.

I started the conversation saying 'you do you'. I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm expecting anything to be swallowed unquestioningly. I've simply explained why many people do find the movie problematic and even linked academics whose expertise you're free to evaluate on your own.

The follow-up question was simply to gauge what your personal line for content in a film being "problematic" is. From what you've said it sounds like your bar is wherever real world problems can be measured as a result. Fair enough if that's your position, but that's quite a high bar just to say a film is distasteful. Birth of a Nation is the only movie I can think of that might clear it.

Ah sorry no I wasn't referring to you derisively there, but these "experts" and grievance peddlers like in the link you sent. I'm really not swayed in the slightest by "won't somebody please think of the children/nazis/lesbians/whatever" shtick. It's just intellectually lazy.

> The movie uses a modern Mayan language for dialogue, uses Maya actors and depicts a religion still practiced today. Moreover, practitioners of that religion were being actively killed for their practice only a decade prior. The analogy with nazis and europeans seems pretty different to me.

Raiders of the Lost Ark uses a modern European language for dialogue, uses white actors, and depicts a religion still practiced today.

What are the differences you were going for?

Maybe you can refresh my memory? The ark in raiders was a macguffin. The only overtly religious character I remember was the imam. If you mean temple of doom with the Kali cult, that's closer except for one important detail. Other movies are careful to mentally distance depictions by having cults be underground or otherwise abnormal and isolated. Think midsommar, wicker man, etc.

The narrative of apocalypto is literally the mainstream Maya priests kidnapping and torturing people to sacrifice them before the protagonist is saved by the distraction of Spaniards arriving. I would consider the same thing with Christianity swapped a bit distasteful as well, but I can't think of any movies like that. Handmaid's tale would count, but that's a deliberate critique rather than unintentional stereotyping.

The Pit and the Pendulum?

Yes, clearly the Mayas were a peaceful society living a perfect harmony with themselves nature and other tribes, and no regular practices contrary to modern sensibilities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_cult...

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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/...

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

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

Obligatory direct link to the paper:

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

There are some really cool images there.

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

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

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

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.

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)

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...

The controversy of the dominant early deciphering school ignoring the phonetic approach of the linguist Knorozov https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov seems a very real and important episode in the decipherement saga. The context here is not the history of Mayan glyph deciphering but the role of utilizing local knowledge

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.

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

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

The low hanging fruit is picked.

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

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