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AshFraxinusEps t1_j19llj2 wrote

Reply to comment by Lord0fHats in Discovery of 1,000 previously unknown Maya settlements challenges the old notion of sparse early human occupation in northern Guatemala (ca. 1000 B.C.–A.D. 150) by marketrent

>Hansen has been arguing the need for increased archeology in this region for nearly 20 years

Let's be honest we should do that for more of the world in general. But yep, the South American civilisations haven't nearly been chronicled enough

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serpentjaguar t1_j1a5x6b wrote

Central American or Mezo-American. The South American cultures are/were very different and unrelated culturally.

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AshFraxinusEps t1_j1a9xil wrote

True, but they are grouped together in the pre-colombian era, like the Med is for all 0AD info outside of China/East, or like Medieval tends to mean Europe not Africa or Asia

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serpentjaguar t1_j1gvq0g wrote

Scarcely. This may be true in the most childlike pedestrian sense, but it holds zero water in terms of even the most basic understanding of New World archaeology and anthropology. There simply is no schemata in which we view the mesoamerican civilizations as having anything whatsoever to do with your South American cultures.

They are totally and completely unrelated and while I think they probably did have a notion of one another, it would have been very dim and mitigated through a long and unreliable trading chain of goods that rarely reached one or the other, and for which we have nearly zero archaeological evidence.

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averytolar t1_j19rsi6 wrote

I’m going to go with Peten being the cradle of maya civilization..Tikal is just a fingernail scratch of what’s out there.

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Lord0fHats t1_j1a2b47 wrote

It's worth investigating. I think the main reason he hasn't just said it is because it's a highly speculative thing with his current data set. El Mirador is where most of his work is but El Mirador is not as old as Highland sites like Kaminaljuyu.

It would be a bit frowned on for him to make that speculative a claim without more data. Issue is collecting data in this field is very time consuming and very expensive.

EDIT: He also apparently did say it and has been frowned on outside my knowledge.

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AshFraxinusEps t1_j1a7ak1 wrote

*Whispers. I'm tapping out. My knowledge isn't enough

But I did hear that maybe Satellite X-Ray scanning has shown an even more ancient civilisation/Stonehenge-like religious place along the Amazon, which makes more sense as long river like the Nile. Might have been more a seasonal giant religious/trade gathering though

BUT, I'll trust you. Maybe Guatemala would have been the Silk Road/Constantinople analogue between North and South America, like Constantinople/Istanbul/Byzantium was for the other giant continent

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averytolar t1_j1abttp wrote

It’s amazing walking around out there. When you walk up the tallest pyramid and look out among the jungle, gives you a vibe that your standing over a lot more than a bunch of howler monkeys.

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Cerebral-Parsley t1_j1avmlq wrote

Yeah I read an article that the Amazon could have had a huge civilization but their buildings were mostly wood. Huge platforms and walkways through the jungle.

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waiver t1_j1edloe wrote

Not sure how South American civilizations would be related to North America (and or Central America) Mayas.

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