I have to say that’s pretty old data (looks like from 2014). From what I’ve seen (I admit, I haven’t followed this very closely), the new lidar data indicates that Mayan cities were much more extensive and densely populated than previously thought. Basically, a lot of what people thought were the cities were just the city cores, with extensive populations further out. The same answer though to what you and I were responding to…they are finding MUCH more extensive agriculture surrounding these cities than previously thought.
Just a quick Google search, but here is an article on Tikal saying the new technology has revealed a lot that was previously unknown. And this is just one city, though it’s a great example, as archeologists had thought they had found most of what was there…until they started looking around with lidar and found they missed most of the city.
Extrapolation of this settlement density to the entire 95,000 km2 of the central lowlands produces a population range of 7 million to 11 million. Settlement distribution is not homogeneous, however; we found evidence of (i) rural areas with low overall density, (ii) periurban zones with small urban centers and dispersed populations, and (iii) urban zones where a single, large city integrated a wider population.
The PLI survey revealed a landscape heavily modified for intensive agriculture, necessary to sustain populations on this scale. Lidar shows field systems in the low-lying wetlands and terraces in the upland areas. The scale of wetland systems and their association with dense populations suggest centralized planning, whereas upland terraces cluster around residences, implying local management. Analysis identified 362 km2 of deliberately modified agricultural terrain and another 952 km2 of unmodified uplands for potential swidden use. Approximately 106 km of causeways within and between sites constitute evidence of inter- and intracommunity connectivity. In contrast, sizable defensive features point to societal disconnection and large-scale conflict.
My understanding is: much more extensive settlement, but not necessarily denser, though. That Afar article seems to be using “densely populated” for just “more populated” but the Science article it’s primarily based on actually uses existing density figure to extrapolate the new population figures. The Afar article also seems to be confusing the Science article’s extrapolation of the entire Central Lowlands population for the population of just Tikal: (my emphases) Science:
Controlling for a number of complex variables, we estimate an average density of ~80 to 120 persons/km2 at the height of the Late Classic period (650 to 800 CE). Extrapolation of this settlement density to the entire 95,000 km2 of the central lowlands produces a population range of 7 million to 11 million.
National Geographic (also cited by Afar):
A vast, interconnected network of ancient cities was home to millions more people than previously thought.
Afar:
Tikal was much more densely populated than previously thought: At its height (between 650 and 800 C.E.), it may have been home to 7 to 11 million people
I guess I should have said…denser than previously thought. Or as you say ‘more populated’. The population projections have gone up substantially over what was previously thought (I’ve seen estimates that basically double the potential populations of people like the Mayan or others in Mexico…even in the Amazon they are saying it’s possible there were a lot more people than they originally thought). That doesn’t mean they were all that dense, wrt other civilizations.
At any rate, their agriculture was much more extensive and they were really incredible engineers, so it’s only a mystery, to me anyway, why people keep trying to insist that all this stuff came from aliens or Egyptians or anyone but the native peoples who actually built the stuff. Of course, it drives me nuts when idiots say the Egyptian pyramids were built by aliens or that the great African civilizations were built by Europeans or aliens or whatever.
It’s no mystery to me. For example, it’s not like von Däniken was shy about his racism.
“ I am not a racialist… Yet my thirst for knowledge enables me to ignore the taboo on asking racial questions simply because it is untimely and dangerous… why are we like we are? Once this basic question is accepted, we cannot and should not avoid the explosive sequel: is there a chosen race? ”
Yeah…I was using mystery there more for effect. It’s not really much of a mystery. It’s not really even mysterious why the All Alien Channel…sorry, History Channel…keeps putting this crap on their channel. It is distressing how many people fall for this silly crap though, and how it keeps cropping up.
I’m going out on a limb here, but in my considered opinion as someone with an actual degree in this shit, a pyramid that size could not store enough to feed all those people without using a wormhole attached to the basement door.
Interesting, thanks. There’s a reason, too, I assume why so many big cities were situated on rivers - it simplified supply issues. One boat can carry even more, from even further, than an oxcart, and substantially more than a bunch of humans.
As for the Alien Channel - I bought a copy of de Sprague’s Ancient Engineers about the time von Daniken was big news on paperback stands, and reading that alone simply made clear that the archeology had no problem showing the evolution of each form of construction that we allegedly find “miraculous”. Considering that there are marvelous constructions all over the world (and indeed, north Europeans are late to the party) proves that there are smart people all over the world. Everything from pyramids to waterworks to roads and bridges, were invented independently and built prodigiously all over the world. The key factors seem to be only necessity and resources. It only seems miraculous if we ignore the developmental precursors. Also, the extent of the total construction (as we see in the Tikal articles mentioned above) often disappears with time.
Egypt is such a mesmerizing place because they built much of their main structures in stone. (Unlike, say, Mesopotamia where their principal materials were mud brick, and wood roofing, which did not stand up to time) The Egyptians mainly used limestone, which they had a lot of and is easily worked. And their main buildings, while adjacent to urban centers, were in desert and so easily buried in sand and preserved. Some of the temples going back to 1400BC still have the original paint on them.
However, many statues and obelisks are granite - despite having only copper and wood tools, they managed to work granite, a very hard rock. But their carving technique is easy to see, and does not involve space lasers.
Yes, if you visit Giza one of the exhibits is a do-it-yourself boat kit, the Sun Boat, of which several are buried in pits around the Great Pyramid. 142 feet long and 19 feet wide, made of wood, from 2500 BC. (Cedar imported from Lebanon, IIRC) it gives you an idea of their contemporary ship-building, no doubt not just an Egyptian skill.
If I recall my reading of Ra Expedition almost 50 years ago, the reed boat in fact did not make it to landfall in the West Indies, becoming waterlogged and sinking several dozen miles short. (And near an area where suitable reeds would have been in short supply if they had wanted to stage a return journey).
I Am Not An Archaeologist, but it’s my understanding that that’s not really true. The ancient Egyptians built the structures that survived more or less intact into the present day out of stone, but they used other materials for a lot of building projects. It’s pure survivor’s selection bias that we commonly think of them as building in stone. Again, IANAA, and this is my understanding that may be wrong: archaeologists have found remains of earlier temples, where the major structural elements were palm trees. Later stone temples used similar building techniques, which were puzzling until archaeologists realized they were transferring building techniques developed for primarily wooden structures. Early stone temples had columns that were clearly stone models of palm trees, and pretty closely replicated the earlier wooden temples. As time went on, those columns became more and more stylized, but often kept decorative features evocative of palm trees, and building techniques changed as the ancient Egyptian builders and engineers learned how to build with stone.
In other words, the marvelous stone constructions of ancient Egypt didn’t suddenly appear de novo, as mysterians like to proclaim, but were embedded in a millennia-long evolution of building technology.
Definitely aliens. Everyone knows that 5,000 years ago humans were too stupid and unsophisticated to know how to stack rocks; at least according to Ancient Aliens believers.
Not really related to the topic of the thread but, in regards to Egyptian maritime capabilities, it seems likely that they had semi-regular trade expeditions to the Land of Punt (somewhere near Djibouti/Southwest Yemen), by sending ships down a canal into the Red Sea.
There are also some hints that they may have been receiving back items from as far away as India, though we don’t have any good records of trade between Africa and India until the time of the later Kingdom of Aksum.
We do, however, have records of trade between Eastern Yemen and India during this time period.
Basically, the capabilities of the Egyptians during this time period allowed them to get as far as the Southern end of the Red Sea. Most likely, Indian items were being shipped across the ocean to Eastern Yemen and then bumped along the coast in stages back to Egypt. The longest and wildest trip in all of that is from Western-most India to Eastern-most Oman and, plausibly, they were going up along the shore to the entrance of the Persian Gulf to cross.
If the Egyptians were treating a trip to Punt like they’d landed a man on the Moon, it’s safe to say that they probably didn’t travel to South America.
No doubt about it. In fact, you can see the remains of a mud brick ramp in the Karnak temple complex for raising the stone blocks, where they were building a temple pylon (wall) and they buggered off in a hurry when the invaders came. The early mastabas (tombs) were mud brick, some survive. Imhotep just realized that mud brick could only be stacked so high if it was going to be difficult to complete, so he opted for limestone blocks.
In general, for the less important structures (i.e. not temples) the Egyptians used mud brick, and very little survives except the outlines. (An exception - the workers’ village near the Valley of the Kings, where you can still see the rock walls of the houses) But of course, there’s a logic to this too. Many of the temples were built on the desert plains above the Nile valley; anything in the valley was subject to annual floods which deposited a few inches of soil each year. (Herodotus IIRC mentions the rate at which the floodplain accretes as a known number). Any permanent structure would effectively “sink” into the ground over time in the farmland. The pyramids of Giza are conveniently located on bluffs where the floodwaters made it possible to float barges with building stones almost right up to the base, even though they are several miles from the actual river.
Even the palaces of the pharaohs seem to have been mud brick - on the flood plain like the villages, probably needing rebuilding every so often. the story goes that much of the geometry we have today was learned by the surveyors of Egypt learning to locate the property boundaries after each flood.
My point being, a lot more of the allegedly permanent structures of, say, Babylon were made with mud brick, since it was a more available resource on a wide plain - unlike the Nile, where the bluffs along the river close by were limestone. Flooding was also less of an issue. Similarly, the great halls of Persia crumbled because the roofs were wood, and invaders took delight in burning them - leaving unsupported columns and walls exposed to be toppled or decay. Many Egyptian temples are roofed in limestone beams (with closely spaced pillars) since large wood for structures was hard to come by.
There are a few places where ancient mud brick structures survive, due to severe lack of rainfall. There are plenty of rock structures all over the world that survive is assorted conditions, depending on the weather. Egypt’s are just the most spectacular due to the environment.
Well, Ra was flat out wrong, but on Kon Tiki, the jury is out:
Heyerdahl’s hypothesis of a South American origin of the Polynesian peoples, as well as his “drift voyaging” hypothesis, is generally rejected by scientists today. Archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence tends to support a western origin for Polynesians, from Island Southeast Asia, using sophisticated multihull sailing technologies and navigation techniques during the Austronesian expansion.[1][2][3] However, there is evidence of some gene flow from South America to Easter Island.[4]
Historians today consider that the Polynesians from the west were the original inhabitants and that the story of the Hanau epe is either pure myth, or a memory of internal tribal or class conflicts.[38][39][40] In 2011, Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo presented DNA evidence to the Royal Society which, whilst agreeing with the west origin, also identified a distinctive but smaller genetic contribution from South America.[41]
So, the anthropologists said it COULD NOT be from South America as the balsa rafts couldn’t possible make it, so Thor proved them wrong on that. Clearly Polynesia, etc was settled from Asia origins, but there is some evidence of trade and cross pollenization.
Evidence is not quite the same thing as proof. I’m intrigued by the sweet potato problem; sweet potatoes originated in the Americas, but are found across the Pacific. Were they carried across the ocean by humans, or did they arrive naturally? I think we need more, or better, evidence to solve this one.
