Honduran ruins predate Mayans

Tiscali ^ | May 13, 2003 (what's the rush?) | Reuters

[SunkenCiv]

Ruins of a pre-Columbian city built before the rise of the Maya civilisation have been discovered in a remote region of eastern Honduras, the Institute of Anthropology and History says.

The so-called City of Encounters, in the wilderness of Botaderos mountain about 120 miles northeast of the capital, includes vestiges of three rectangular plazas, various mounds and small stone-encrusted pillars.

It appears to have been built in the pre-Classical or early Classical period between 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., said Mexican anthropologist Victor Heredia, an investigator for the institute.

"It's a pre-Hispanic city, a complex site. It has a well-defined architectural structure that implies the work of many people over a long period of time," he said on Tuesday.

The region was inhabited by Tawhakas Indians, whose descendants still live in Honduras, although it is unknown which culture inhabited the site.

"The society that lived there had a political hierarchy with a diversification of jobs. We are talking about a complex fiefdom or an incipient state," Heredia said.

The ruins cover at least 12 acres (5 hectares) at the point where two rivers meet. About 10 families now occupy the spot.

Eastern Honduras is home to the Mayan ruins at Copan, part of a civilisation that extended from Mexico through Central America between 250 and 1000 A.D.

[SunkenCiv]

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[muawiyah]

CLUE: All the old pre-Columbian stuff in the New World is “Pre Hispanic”.

[Fractal Trader]

So did this group also believe in 2012?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Their guess as to when this settlement existed is probably based on the window of opportunity between the empire of the Olmecs, which ended about 400 B.C. (with a hundred years leeway), and overlapping a bit into the Mayan Classical period, which began in earnest about 250 A.D.

This implies that there is something about this site that is distinctly different from either culture. But it also suggests that whoever they were, they were exterminated by the bloodthirsty Mayans.

This brings up the delicious irony of how, for many decades, the more squishy-minded embraced the notion that the Mayans were “children of nature, who lived at peace with their fellow Indians and their environment.”

This fantasy was definitively ended some years ago, when a Mayan mural was discovered in a hidden basement of one of their buildings. It depicted how the Mayans systematically butchered a people they had defeated at war, in the most horrific ways imaginable, spending some six months reveling in torture and utter carnage.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

the Mayans were “children of nature, who lived at peace with their fellow Indians and their environment.

I believe they have devolved into what we now know as "undocumented workers"

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Actually, if you head down to Guatemala, if you are familiar with Mayan and Olmec culture, you will get a surprise. Half the people look like Olmecs, kind of a defeated, humble people, heads looking much like the giant stone heads, with almost negroid noses.

The other half look like Mayans, right off the murals, and they have good, upright posture, long strides in their walk, and look like an undefeated people. Close to Roman noses.

[gleeaikin]

I don’t know which decades you are referring to about the squishy-minded thinking the Mayans were such nice guys. When I first became interested in Mayans about 55 years ago, I was struck by their human sacrifices throwing people into the sacred Cenote wells.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exevarom.html

It started from the time of their rediscovery in the 19th Century. At the time, America was full of wacky ideas, so when John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood published lavishly illustrated and inexpensive books about the Maya, every fantasist latched on to it for their own agenda.

Ever since Jean-Jacques Rousseau had idealized his Garden of Eden parody, the State of Nature, there had been a popular search to find primitive peoples and cultures who lived that fantasy life. And with their elaborate cities and art, it was easy to imagine the Mayans as living in a pre-industrial paradise.

Only when professional archaeologists began examining their rather loathsome culture, did the light finally start to dawn. But the inertia of what many wanted the Maya to be, and what they actually were, lasted for a long time. Even today, with dumbasses convinced that the Maya could see into the future a thousand years after their own civilization crumbled.

[SunkenCiv]

The bloodthirsty ways of the Maya have been part of the US school curriculum for at least 45 years, or I should say, had been, it’s possible that such stuff has been cut in recent years to make way for self-esteem classes and macrame’.

[coconutt2000]

I find it hilarious when people attribute “nature friendliness” to ancient cultures. If those same ancient cultures had invented plastic and had more trash that wasn’t biodegradable we’d be cursing them for littering... because if modern day primitive cultures are any indicator, environmentalism is not part of their way of life.