
The only Maya city with an urban grid may embody a creation myth - Thevet
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/303-1807/features/6684-maya-urban-grid
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ruytlm
It's fascinating to imagine how future peoples might interpret current day
cities, should there be a similar loss of knowledge in between.

Skyscrapers in particular will be interesting, given that to date no building
over 200m tall has been voluntarily demolished[0], and there are currently
1340 buildings in the world over 200m tall[1].

[0]: [http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings?list=tallest-
demol...](http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings?list=tallest-demolished)
[1]: [http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/](http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/)

~~~
qubex
I wonder what they’ll make of “Manhattan-henge”. That always comes to mind
when I hear of folks of the Graham Hancock type speaking knowingly of advanced
astronomical intentons being encoded into the various layouts of ancient
buildings... and I find myself thinking “ _er, no... stuff lining up on
astronomically relevant dates occurs whenever you arrange stuff regularly, and
if you’re willing to ‘force’ these to fall on equinoxes or solstices you only
have to mess around with the dates you’re willing to quote for construction_
”.

(To wit, some of these theories may be correct, but it’s easy for one’s sense
of skepticism to be blindsided by apparently compelling cases that arise by
sheer chance.)

~~~
notahacker
Vaguely related humorous piece about archaeologists of the distant future
discovering a well-preserved example of a mid 20th century motel; they
conclude every unfamiliar item within it from the toilet to the television has
religious significance

[http://sultanaeducation.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/Motel...](http://sultanaeducation.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/Motel-of-the-Mysteries-Macaulay.pdf)

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dougb5
I couldn't find the GPS coordinates for Nixtun-Ch’ich’ listed anywhere, so I
went hunting for it around Lake Petén Itzá and found it here:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lago+Peten+Itza/@16.953099...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lago+Peten+Itza/@16.9530992,-89.9282972,2165a,35y,90h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8f5f924b4bd4e37b:0x3ece0839b7306ec4!8m2!3d16.9948175!4d-89.8224054)

~~~
xaedes
Thank you!

What is this:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B058'10.7%22N+89%C2%...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B058'10.7%22N+89%C2%B059'45.1%22W/@16.9696551,-89.9980407,2313m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x8f5f924b4bd4e37b:0x3ece0839b7306ec4!2zUGV0w6luLUl0esOhLVNlZQ!3b1!8m2!3d16.9948175!4d-89.8224054!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d16.9696505!4d-89.9958518)

It is to the west of the old city and points directly to the city. Distance to
the city ~7.4km

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roel_v
So did I just miss it, or is there really no image with this supposed
'crocodile' overlaid on the layout of the city as they found it so far?

~~~
dhimes
Apparently the weak point of accepting this explanation of the layout is that
so far they have _not_ found such confirming evidence as this.

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rossdavidh
It is very, very difficult for archaeologists (or any humans, really) to say,
"I don't know why".

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tCfD
It's somewhat important to note that this is the only _Maya_ city with an
urban grid. The city of Teotihuacan, as pointed out in the article, was much
bigger and also had a planned urban grid system. It also was founded several
centuries later.

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asimjalis
The key here is "may".

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aiyodev
Add this to the long list of evidence of ancient contact between Asia and the
Americas.

~~~
leeeeech
The words "long" and "evidence" are gross overstatements, but the claim is
trivially true if including the Asian origin in "contact". While there is no
definite proof for extended contact beyond that, there is no final proof to
the opposite either.

The basics are easy to look up. There is plenty of time for exchange in the at
least 4000 years of immigration from Asia through the Bering Strait before it
almost completely submerged at a time when the first civilizations already
emerged, among them chinese.

Still though: Mezo America is far from there in time and space; Grid layout is
kind of natural, because only a few space filling polygons exist; The
linguistic evidence is very weak at the very least because of the time span,
isolation, the lack of written records and corruption of oral tradition.

The search space is huge. A few attractive artifacts may just be noise in the
signal. All it takes to satisfy the claim beyond the initial exchange is a
single successful explorer.

