Posted on 08/02/2020 2:06:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The great Maya "white road" that connected the cities of Coba and Yaxuna was an incredible feat of engineering. Built around A.D. 700, the 26-foot-wide road paved in white plaster extended more than 60 miles across the Yucatan Peninsula. Much of this route is today shrouded in thick vegetation, but a new lidar survey has provided researchers with high-quality images of the busy road's path. Using these images, they have detected many lost villages and more than 8,000 hidden structures that once lined the route.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
So...not racist?
I don’t mind the Mayans.
You get your kix or Route Xixty Xix.
Pity they never figured out the wheel.
“Many lost villages”
Nothing sadder than a lost village.
“Where do I belong?”
“Does anyone know where I’m supposed to be?”
Somewhere a lost village is missing its idiot.
They did. They made toys with wheels. It's a mystery why they didn't use wheels for other purposes. Maybe they were impractical for use in the jungle generally. Thanks to lidar knowledge of the Mayans is expanding tremendously. Maybe wheeled vehicles will someday be discovered.
I can understand a travois on the prairie. Hugely efficient being pulled by a dog, or whatever, over the grasses. But if you’ve built a road you’d think they would have looked at their toys and said “Hmmmmm”. Even their calendar was a wheel. “It’s a mystery”.
60 mile road?
Rome could build that in a day.
(Well, maybe 30 days, depends on the width and how many bridges...)
Actually, a unique aspect of Roman road building wasn’t just the engineering, it was the deep legal code that guided it, its uses, its repair and its interchange w/ private property.
I’m guessing the Mayan kings just pointed and the road was built that direction.
What makes the wheel useful is having domesticated animals that can pull a wagon. They didn’t have horses or oxen.
Two words: No horses
Without draft animals, the wheel is less useful, particularly if you have options that work. Without a need driving change, people will stick with what works.
Great minds think alike...
“Two words: No horses”
One word: Human.
There is a reason wheelbarrows have wheels. And why shopping carts don’t have skids to use when crossing flat floors. And that reason is NOT “Horses”.
Seems like there is a lot more substance here:
https://www.themayanruinswebsite.com/coba-yaxuna-sacbe.html
than at those links.
Llama, anyone?
I’m curious about the plaster material they used for paving—how durable it was, how they maintained it, and just plain what it looked like.
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