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Comment by lukehollis | Hacker News Reader

It's something we have to be careful of while working on site! We're really careful around the rooms that have mercury in them--there are few that I didn't put in the guide also.

I was wondering about this too: they've found high levels of mercury in the water supply at Maya cities and believe now it contributed to the eventual collapse: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/mercury-and-algal-bl...

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> “The drinking and cooking water for the Tikal rulers and their elite entourage almost certainly came from the Palace and Temple Reservoirs,” wrote Lentz and his colleagues. “As a result, the leading families of Tikal likely were fed foods laced with mercury at every meal.”

This makes me think: what if today's rulers are being poisoned by something making them act like idiots?

Ha! that's the best theory yet

It could be that there is something making our leaders mentally ill, or it could be that only the mentally ill think that they should be leaders.

> This makes me think: what if today's rulers are being poisoned by something making them act like idiots?

Leaded gasoline! With how old politicians are in the US, they are almost certainly affected.

They're also old enough to have drank tap-water from lead pipes daily for decades (I learned on HN that it was mandatory for building companies in Chicago to install lead pipes until the 70s).

Claiming that today’s rulers are acting like idiots seems off topic. And subjective too; even if only because yesterday’s rulers weren’t different.

Greed is a poison. Has been recognized as such for at least 2,500 years.

https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/three-poisons/

It's called "social media"

Or maybe the populace is being poisoned and their leaders need to behave like idiots to control a herd of dumb'ed down and stupid beings.

Imagine people 100 years from now asking themselves "how did they not understand the effect that microplastics were having?"

Advanced civilizations get good at using unusual materials like lead and mercury. Some of these come with unforeseen consequences. Plastic and oil are the two substances most like these for us in present day.

I suspect that that stuff is far more contextually important than it might seem at first, despite it being noted as designated only for the most important rituals.

It's ever so hard to try and get inside the minds of people from long ago. I think it is fair to assume that we think in a compatible way with these people and if we can glean enough clues we can reasonably draw conclusions.

It might be informative to look for clues as to what the people who had to deploy this stuff actually thought about it. The amazing carvings, catacombs and so on tell a lot about the Maya people and it seems that they are well interpreted but I don't think that this red poison is particularly well interpreted. I think there is a lot more to be learned.

The archaeology there is absolutely mind blowing. Thank you to everyone involved. Your work is phenomenal.

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