Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ permalink
Maya pyramids
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Message 1.Β
Posted by mickeymay (U3600416) on Friday, 3rd August 2007
I've been watching a lot of documentaries about the maya and the egyptians, it seems strange to me that the two civilisations can be linked because of the pyramids they built, both of which seem to have little in common with each other, any views?
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Message 2
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Friday, 3rd August 2007
The fact that they built structures of approximately the shape shape seems a very silly way of trying to link them. Apart from anything else, the Egyptian pyramids were tombs/monuments, the Mayan pyramids were temples. In fact, an Egyptian pyramid has more in common with a European Neolithic burial mound than a Mayan pyramid.
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Message 3
Posted by FeurTrunken (U9251923) on Friday, 3rd August 2007
hey
i totally agree. although i've read a lot about egypt but the little that i've read about the south american natives, tells me that they were totally different.
Also have you seen that movie 'Apocolypto'? although mel gibson always has to have a lot of violence in his movies which i don't like, but the movie gives a very horrible picuture of the south americans natives -
Message 4
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
When analysis of a subject, especially one for which many essential source references are non-existent such as with both of the ancient civilisations mentioned, lends itself to conjecture it is inevitable that some people will avail of the opportunity to conjecture ignorantly. Untrammeled by the requirement to base their conjecture in fact they are free to draw erroneous and fantastic conclusions. In this day and age the motivation for this can be simply to make money from selling their theories to individuals who are equally ignorant.
A good indication of when you are being fed bull-poo as fact is when a crucial piece of verifiable data (or several) is omitted from the narration, grossly understated or even falsified. In this case it is the relative ages of the structures in Yucatan compared to those in North Africa. Much work has been done regarding dating and sequencing the impressive architecture the Mayans (and Aztecs) left behind them. At the time the Mayans were still experimenting with piling gravel into mounds and their step-pyramids still a far-distant outcome of such activity the Egyptian pyramids were already regarded as incredibly ancient and fantastic structures, and indeed were in much the same condition as they are now, the civilisation that produced them having long been transformed and eradicated through the course of a millennium. This rather inconvenient statistic is one however that the pedlars of the "they must have known each other" theory would wish us not to dwell on. A cursory examination of websites devoted to Mayan architecture reveals this trend. Serious architectural and archaeological analysts of the structures (the minority of sites) cite their ages as a matter of course - the rest, for all their pretension to scientific theory, simply omit this information or blatantly lie about it. -
Message 5
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
People often forget that pyramid is actually the most simple manner for ancient cultures to built a large, tall building that can withstand the test of time without the need for deep foundations. Why? Obviously! Center of gravity. A vertical building could reach a certain height, then the movement of soil, humidity (not so much in the case of Egypt though), natural corrosion, earthquakes etc. would compromise the condition of the building. Any conserved vertical large-sized tall building would at some point fall.
Pyramid shape also had the advantage of permitting workers to climb up with materials without much need of cranes and elevators. Simple as that. Hence, not surprising that it is why it is the preferred shape of other earlier civilisations like the pro-Mycenean Greeks, Chinese, neo-lithic French etc. Mesopotamians also had their pyramids of similar size, the Zigurats but then these were built with softer stones thus were corroded faster, and their materials were re-used in later structures.
Hence, as people said already here, there is indeed very very little other than one shape to link all these buildings even in a distant way.
Now, whether Egyptians had contact with the Americas, well some rich aristocrats and pharaos had been (legal back then) addicts of cocaine! Why not? Most probably it was other sailors that were bringing all these to them. Personally I do not think that Oddysey sings for a hero lost in the Mediterranean, a sea known by heart by Minoan and Mycenean sailors for 10 years. That story would be the case of jokes not epic poems. In anyway American natives knew the "pale faces" from the east, much before Colombus arrived (and Egyptians were not that much pale!). -
Message 6
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
The allegation that cocaine deposits found in Egyptian mummies points to a trade between the American and African continents is another of those areas where speculation has outstripped (and actually ignored) scientific method. The mummies tested in 1992 by the German based Balabanova covered a span of several centuries, and this itself should have warned her and the other scientists involved that the evidence pointed to something other than the simplistic assumption of 'drug supplies' making it around the world for the benefit of Egyptian nobility.
Further testing has confirmed slight traces both of cocaine and nicotine, but even more tellingly it has revealed bitumen deposits commensurate not with Egyptian embalment techniques but Iranian. Pollen and other materials trapped in the paraphernalia surrounding the mummies also reveals exposure to a variety of environments, but the most likely being the area now occupied by Iraq and Iran.
It is now the conservative view that the mummies in question were of insufficiently dependable provenance to be reliable indicators of Egyptian society in the millennium BC. For one thing their age was indeterminate from Carbon-dating, leading many to conclude that in at least some of the cases studied the corpses might actually be Iranian in origin from a time not so long ago when Persia was the centre of a lucrative 'false mummy' business (mummy is a Persian word for bitumen). The deposits that had caused such a furore might therefore have a rather mundane and obvious cause!
Of course this rather anti-climactic view based on scientific study has not silenced all the fantasists who jumped on the bandwagon in 1992 and see no reason to get off it since profits are still to be made in promulgating their notions. Just like the Iranian hoaxers whose activities probably provided the source material in the first place, their modern counterparts see no reason to let a little inconvenient truth get in the way of their business activities. -
Message 7
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
That is why I did not support 100% a direct link between Egyptians and American natives. But then if it is all about a fake mummy then how on earth Persian falsifications done 1-2 centuries ago managed to pass as 4000 years old mummies? Quite skilled those Persians artists isn't it? I would love to buy things from them. What is though important is that in the case you present one should worry about the inability of Egyptologists (despite being the best specialists among all archailogists) to spot the false from the real... I will start wondering about many other things as well.
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Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
The fakery was convincing largely due to the fact that Persian middlemen were uniquely placed to capitalise on early European interest in Egyptology, especially French 'collectors of antiquities' who never left their comfortable armchairs in Paris. The amount of contextual corruption during this prolonged period of uncontrolled 'excavation' and acquirement was considerable. A recent re-evaluation of the National Museum in Dublin's rather small Egyptian collection, acquired in the main via British and French private collections assembled in this period, revealed that nearly the entire thing needed re-labelling.
The Persian fakery was not, by today's standards, very good at all. But it was so common as to corrupt the record sufficiently to cause confusion, even now. The German university incidentally performed the same tests some five years later on mummies with a more dependable provenance and found nothing extraordinary at all by way of mineral and other deposits. Egyptologists, when given the rare opportunity to examine uncorrupted material in a thorough scientific manner, are in fact very level headed and astute in spotting fakes. That's how we know what we do about the extent of the Iranian pollution of the material in the first place. -
Message 9
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
Thanks for the clarification Normann, indeed extremely interesting. My belief in precolumbian contact with the Americas is more based on myths such as that of Atlantis (true or imagination it makes reference to islands and a great continent behind) rather than evidence that can constitute no proof as you discuss above nicely.
However, still it amazes me that people from Iran went on to falsify Egyptian mummies while Arab or Turkish people would not do it... I mean there is some really large distance not to mention the animosity between Turkish & Arabs against Persians - I mean it must had been more of a one-off like that Israeli mad collector who went on to falsify a stone to make it seem to refer to the temple of Solomon!
I remember the above guy was really an expert, he took care of every detail (corosion, technique of writing, alphabet more close to Phoenician, plate exposed to fire, plate made by stone taken from 6th B.C. century geological layers!, scipt recovered by similar 6th century material etc.). Everyone was tricked, laboratories included. However it was one phrase he had written that seemed strange in the whole text: while the plate had a language of 6th B.C. century Jewish one phrase seemed to be out of meaning - it would have a meaning if it was Jewish of later than 1 A.D. but back in the 6th B.C. century, it had the opposite meaning. It was only one archaiologist with knowledge of ancient jewish that noticed it. Hence that rose suspicions, then the plate returned to labs where this time they scratched in depth a part of the script - bingo! beneath it, it was all a late 20th century A.D. old curving!!! Israeli police invaded this rich guys' house and took all the collection out of which a nice 70% was proved to be falsifications! Imagine much of this guys' indeed amazing work was already on display in museums around the world! -
Message 10
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 4th August 2007
I read about him. Really impressive stuff it was too - the guy was more of an expert than the experts who rumbled him, I reckoned.
I believe the markets in Persia and what is now modern Iraq is where mummies were first sold as antiquities to Europeans in great numbers (hence the adoption of the Farsi word into English) and the guys were astute enough businessmen to keep the racket in their patch, even when French and British military intervention made access to the 'motherlode' a little more difficult. The trick was to assemble goods purportedly relating to an individual burial and sell them as a 'lot', with the corpse thrown in for an additional consideration. Unfortunately from a modern egyptological point of view this meant that the most corrupted material was bought by the biggest collectors, of which national museums then competing with each other as a matter of prestige were to the forefront.
Just in case anyone thinks I'm having a go at Persians I should add that the same divilment was going on with the looting of Greek artefacts under the auspices of mainly Turkish middlemen. In fact it was going on everywhere, come to think of it (a few Celtic Irish 'hordes' found at this time have come under very critical scrutiny lately also). -
Message 11
Posted by henvell (U1781664) on Monday, 6th August 2007
Pyramid mounds with structures at the top in the coastal valleys of Peru pre-date the earliest Egyptian endeavours to construct a pyramid by about two hundred years.The Peruvian type was similar to those in southern Mesopotamia,which were built at a later date.
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Message 12
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 7th August 2007
An egregious statement henvell, since the structures you refer to correspond in building technique more closely with the ziggurat architecture of Mesopotamia, and again find themselves predated by the latter (not 'at a later date' as you suggest).
In fact I assume you are changing the dates in order to lend your support to the notion that there was communication between the cultures. If so, then you could well include pyramid-like structures dating to the same early bronze age in Bangalore, and one or two others that have been tentatively identified in Africa and Eastern Europe. And if you go to that extreme (and are equally flexible with your dating) you might as well impute that architectural knowledge was disseminated globally by adjacent cultures and required no trans-hemisphereal direct contact at all.
But that wouldn't be as exciting, would it, just equally unfounded an assumption relating to mound structures whose design principal requires manpower rather than imagination to conceive and put into practise. -
Message 13
Posted by henvell (U1781664) on Tuesday, 7th August 2007
The calibrated age for the Peruvian type ziggurats by Cambridge University is 3150 BCE +/-100 years.To the best of my knowledge there were no ziggurats in southern Mesopotamia at that time.
The sole purpose of my post was to indicate that the Peruvian structures were an indigenous innovation and that there was no communication with Egypt or Mesopotamia.There is a significant hiatus between the Egyptian and Maya pyramids.The latter were a local development. -
Message 14
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 7th August 2007
Then I apologise for having interpreted your post to mean the exact opposite.
With regard to the ziggurat dating a study completed in 2001 financed by amongst others, the Iraqi and Israeli governments (now there's a combination fo you!), and led by a team of German archaeologists from Berlin questioned the previously accepted figures for the extant constructions as being too recent. Using a dating technique which involved chemical comparison between constituent bricks they found that some of the structures in fact had apparently taken over five hundred years to build, indicating a continuous replenishment of materials and enhancement of design. Core samples, belonging often to structures that may not indeed have been ziggurats at all but simply elevated temple constructions on crude mounds, by this method could be estimated to be up to a thousand years older than the external layers.
That their evolving design must have influenced nearby Egyptian architects, I agree, must have been a factor. But it is worth noting that the same comparison technique, when applied to Egyptian pyramids, indicates a much shorter building time (decades rather than centuries), and therefore a completely different application of manpower and technology, as well as a different purpose, indicating that the Egyptian pyramids, if they were modelled on Mesopotamian forerunners, were based on observation rather than cultural exchange. -
Message 15
Posted by henvell (U1781664) on Wednesday, 8th August 2007
Had a senior moment the excavations at Huacas de los Idoles and Sacrifios were conducted by Harvard and not Cambridge University.There is a desciption of the two structures in "The Incas and their Ancestors" by Micheal Mosley,2001 edition.Thames and Hudson were the publishers.
The original radio carbon dates have been calibrated by calpal,2007,which makes them about 100 years older than the 2000 calibrations.They were not able to obtain dates for the bottom levels of either structure.However one of them took at least 400 years to construct,which indicates manpower utilization similar to Mesopotamia,rather than Egypt.
Independent evolution in Peru and Mesopotamia,but a fair few similarities.[no verbs!]. -
Message 16
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 14th August 2007
I've been watching a lot of documentaries about the maya and the egyptians, it seems strange to me that the two civilisations can be linked because of the pyramids they built, both of which seem to have little in common with each other, any views? Β
It's a classic example of the claim that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". A couple of mesoamerican pyramids are similar to a couple of Egyptian pyramids, from which people draw a completely false conclusion that the former must be inspired by the latter.
The pryamid of the sun at Teotihuacan which is claimed as the main contender to being "Egyptian"
is not strictly speaking Mayan, but certainly is influenced by the pyramids developed in the Mayan region.
If more people knew about sites like La Venta where pyramid building was developed in Mexico, then they'd not make spurious claims. La Venta clearly shows early attempts to build circular mound structures formed from stones, at a later date they started to strainghten out the sides to produce the classic rectangular shape.
Come to think of it, the early pyramids were closer in form to Silbury hill than to the Great pyramid at Giza. Clearly, neolithic Britons fleeing from the incoming celtic culture must have got in their little coracles and paddled the Atlantic to continue their mound building habits in safety. Many central american cities are similar in layout to Carnac in Brittany which must also prove that Carnac is simply a representative architect's model used to persuade the local megalith builders to move to America. OK, that's complete rubbish, but it is as possible as claims that Egyptians moved to Mexico and started a completly new civilization (apart from carrying on building pyramids but in a very different style). -
Message 17
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 14th August 2007
OK, that's complete rubbish,Β
But it did produce a wonderful mental image of an armada of coracles, their occupants paddling like fury. -
Message 18
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 14th August 2007
As simply as that. For all neolithic cultures, the pyramid was the simplest geometrical form to apply in larger structures. If they opted for a vertical skyscraper it would fall down with the first flood or earthquake. The first known vertical skyscraper was Alexandria's lighthouse in Hellenistic era and that of course lasted for some centuries and fell down. We know that in later Roman times they constructed tall buildings of more than 10 storeys (so they must had some sort of elevators for visitors also) since in early Byzantine times they prohibited the construction of more than 9 storeys for fear of earthquakes of course. But such buildings back in neolithic times would be nearly impossible - not to mention that architects back then would not dare think of such bold designs since their techniques permited consturction of large objects more easily by the use of a conical shape which is inherently more stable and more easy to built (you can move heavy material and men upwards more easily).
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Message 19
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 14th August 2007
There's a passage in the Terry Pratchett novel 'Pyramids' in which an architect muses on how everything when piled up tends to form a cone, and concludes that pyramids are just a neater form of cone. Only vaguely relevant but I thought I'd mention it
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Message 20
Posted by villamarce (U9034231) on Wednesday, 12th September 2007
Have you ever read "They Came Before Columbus" by Ivan Van Sertima/ or are you aware of the Olmec civilisation? Some of the "Indian" tribesmen of South America claim to have an ancestry heralding from africa,with dates referred to ,well before Columbus and therefore the transatlantic slave trade.
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Message 21
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 12th September 2007
I haven't read Van Sertima, but I am aware of his hypothesis. It rests on two flimsy pieces of evidence. 1) African bottle gourds were cultivated in meso-America, therefore they must have been taken by Africans. 2) Olmec head statues look a bit like Africans.
The bottle gourd is adapted by evolution to be carried in rivers and on seas. Perfectly natural currents and tides will and do carry these across the Atlantic. Secondly, there is good evidence to show that they were domesticated first in the Americas. So Africans going to America would not bother to take it.
The Olmec heads look like Africans if you want them to. They also look like indigenous Americans and like Asiatic heads. They are dissimilar to typical African faces in two respects. The noses mostly resemble West Africans but lack the typical prognothic jaw of West Africans. They also clearly show epicanthic eye folds which are asiatic in origin, not African (unless you go back to the time when we were all African).
I've also seen claims that skull heads in one Olmec cemetary are of the African type. Now I thought that racial characterization based on measuring skulls wernt out with the Nazis. Mainly because there is more difference within racial groups than there are between racial groups. Large numbers of heads could be indicative of the racial group X, but you'd need a vast number to confidently say they weren't just a large family of big chinned, sunken eyed or high foreheaded people of a different racial group. If one genuinely believed race can be determined from the shape of a skeleton (which it can't), then the Clovis skeleton proves North America was settled by white! -
Message 22
Posted by mickeymay (U3600416) on Monday, 1st October 2007
villamarce, accordingly everyone came from Africa and populated the world, perhaps beginning 50,000 years ago during the ice age. I think it's a reasonable theory, considering the land was/probably ice locked. You make an interesting claim in the Olmec culture, is this part of their written culture or word of tongue?
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Message 23
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Monday, 1st October 2007
Mickeymay,
DNA evidence certainly suggests that all pre-columbian american societies came via north east Asia:
Villamacre actually mentioned South American tribes, not Olmecs. It's not surprising to have a country with a myth that they were descended from a gorup from elsewhere. Romans and Britons claimed to be descended from Trojans. The claim is often nothing to do with genetics, but an attempt to give a more prestigious lineage to the culture or ruling family.
In South America, the continent wasn't explored for a long time after the first setlers and slaves arrived there. Africans could easily have arrived as sailors or slaves, then moved into the interior giving rise to the foundation myth after the traditional date of trans-atlantic contact. -
Message 24
Posted by villamarce (U9034231) on Thursday, 25th October 2007
In reply, if its of any help Ivan Van Sertima in "They Came Before Columbus" outlines possible connections from Africa and Egypt to South America.
There are also other hints to relationships between Africa and the Americas such as the Olmec statues in Mexico.
The arguments making the links are far more sophisticated than as to simply suggest that just because both cultures made similar constructions ,that they must be related. -
Message 25
Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Thursday, 25th October 2007
Hi CloudyJ,
It's not surprising to have a country with a myth that they were descended from a group from elsewhere.Β
You're not wrong there - one of my favourites has to be the Scots as written in the Declaration of Arbroath. As late as the start of the 14th century they were claiming...
...we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today...Β
Now I might be being a bit pedantic here, but if you came from Greater Scythia and wanted to get to Scotland, wouldn't you have chosen a more direct route than the one they chose - especially, if as a nation you were famously prone to freckles and sunburn?
Cheers,
RF
p.s. Does anybody know what the sources are for their claims of descent? -
Message 26
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 26th October 2007
Now I might be being a bit pedantic here, but if you came from Greater Scythia and wanted to get to Scotland, wouldn't you have chosen a more direct route than the one they chose - especially, if as a nation you were famously prone to freckles and sunburn? Β
Thanks for that RF, I needed a laugh.
I suspect it was probably made up by some early monkish Alistair Campbells. The DNA evidence doesn't seem to point to Scythia, but British celtic DNA, is similar to Iberian DNA, so maybe they were fed up of sunburn. The Scots having a claim to be descended from a very different tribe to the English was politically useful in 1320.
Medieval countries seemed to need to create more or less fake histories for themselves, possibly as a way of fostering the national conciousness which developed during that period. The Irish migration myths have them as the last of 5 waves of invaders. The Welsh have Geoffrey of Monmouth caliming descent from the Trojans (technically a Norman propogandist, but the Normans tried to portray themselves as the true heirs to the Britons and Saxons who came before them). The English, being a bit under the thumb at the time missed out, but do have Bede's history from an earlier period which is probably a little more accurate (and much less ambitious in its claims - "we came from the other side of a small sea in a boat"). -
Message 27
Posted by villamarce (U9034231) on Friday, 26th October 2007
The evidence for the hypothesis for pre Columbus contact with the Americas from Africa is considerably greater than the notion of having gourds in common!
As you say ,you havent actually read anything about what you are commenting on i.e. Van Sertima.
Ps anyone who hasnt been brain washed into thinking that black civilisation doesnt exist would easily identify the Olmec statues as clearly depicting an number of African phenotypes! -
Message 28
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 26th October 2007
Sounds to me like brainwashing obviously cuts both ways.
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Message 29
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Monday, 29th October 2007
As you say ,you havent actually read anything about what you are commenting on i.e. Van Sertima. Β
I haven't. I scoured my local bookshops at the weekend trying to find it, but seems I'll have to order it online.
Ps anyone who hasnt been brain washed into thinking that black civilisation doesnt exist would easily identify the Olmec statues as clearly depicting an number of African phenotypes!Β
Well, I'm happy to think I've not been brainwashed, but thanks for the insult. Can you comment specifically on the facial features, such as the epicanthic eye folds which are not an African feature?
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