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Lidar helps uncover an ancient, kilometer-long Mayan structure – TechCrunch:
Lidar is fast becoming one of the most influential tools in archaeology, revealing things in a few hours what might have taken months of machete wielding and manual measurements otherwise. The latest such discovery is an enormous Mayan structure, more than a kilometer long, 3,000 years old, and seemingly used for astronomical observations.
Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona is the lead author of the paper describing the monumental artificial plateau, published in the journal Nature. This unprecedented structure — by far the largest and oldest of its type — may remind you of another such discovery, the "Mayan megalopolis" found in Guatemala two years ago.
[...] Such huge structures, groups of foundations, and other evidence of human activity may strike you as obvious. But when you're on the ground they're not nearly as obvious as you'd think — usually because they're covered by both a canopy of trees and thick undergrowth.
"I have spent thousands of hours of fieldwork walking behind a local machete-wielding man who would cut straight lines through the forest," wrote anthropologist Patricia McAnany, who was not involved in the research, for an commentary that also appeared in Nature. "This time-consuming process has required years, often decades, of fieldwork to map a large ancient Maya city such as Tikal in Guatemala and Caracol in Belize."
[...] What emerged was an enormous ceremonial center now called Aguada Fénix, the largest feature of which is an artificial plateau more than 10 meters tall and 1.4 kilometers in length. It is theorized that these huge plateaus, of which Aguada Fénix is the oldest and largest, were used to track the movement of the sun through the seasons and perform various rites.
Journal Reference:
Takeshi Inomata, Daniela Triadan, Verónica A. Vázquez López, et al. Monumental architecture at Aguada F├⌐nix and the rise of Maya civilization, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2343-4)
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @05:26AM (4 children)
How does this "discovery" of an ancient Mayan building affect anyone at all? Why would anyone at all care about this?
Now, I know, my comment will be censored to -1 to avoid answering this simple question. But why are we paying for "research" like this when there are far more important problems to be solved like the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change? How does a building used for determining when ancient people performed their batshit crazy religious ceremonies affect anyone in the present day?
I think we all know the answer to this question. There is absolutely no value to this research. However, instead of admitting this, my comment will be censored to -1 to avoid the question.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @09:36AM (2 children)
There is no value *to you*. Which is much different than no value at all.
What's more, you haven't been *censored* at all. If you had been, I wouldn't be able to see your idiotic comment and reply to it.
I will likely also be downmodded as '-1 offtopic' too. However, that's because your comment and mine are not germane to the topic at hand. And I won't whinge like a little bitch about it like you do.
Your comment is much like the one from apk below, not germane to the topic and gratuitously obnoxious.
If you're not interested in archaeology, don't read/post in archaeology discussions.
If there's stuff you'd rather discuss, submit an article. In fact, in the time you took to complain about this, you could have submitted an article that actually interests you. A crazy thought, I know.
As for the general topic of history/archaeology, Eugen Weber had it right [youtube.com]:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @09:26PM (1 child)
Thanks for the measured and useful response. Hopefully the good actor, non-troll ACs pay attention to the ideas you list. It'd make for better conversations here.
But yeah, thanks - not just for the info you provided, but also for how you phrased it. Gentle, chiding, but not mean or demeaning. Not argumentative or escalating, and offering real options for positions that you don't hold. Very intellectually honest, and very appreciated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @11:28PM
Don't encourage this sort of behavior! We have a reputation to maintain!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:15PM
I doubt an archeologist would be much help solving COVID-19 nor climate change.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.