Mayan Propaganda ( conspiracy )

submitted by Judgejewdy

Can anyone tell me (serious question) why the Mayans (and Incas/Aztecs/etc) are heralded as some great civilization? As far as I can tell (and admittedly I’ve done little investigation) they couldn’t do in 900 AD what the Minoans had done in 2000 BC (yes, I stubbornly still say BC) or what the Egyptians were doing in 3000 BC.

Why were they so behind the rest of the world? Is it just further evidence that life started around the Fertile Crescent and it took that long to disperse out? And is it further evidence of how long life had to be around before they were advanced enough to, say, create a civilization like the Minoans or Egyptians? (Or is it evidence that a supernatural power, I.e. God, must have enlightened them - otherwise they’d be as backward as the Mayans after 2000 years?)

Furthermore, what’s the deal with acting like the Mayans are so great? PC bs? Pushing it on us to prop up the idea of flooding illegals into the States? Bc, frankly, after as much time as they had they should’ve been able to come up with something better than what they had. So I see no reason to be impressed. Then again, I may just be ignorant and racist. Which is why I’m asking.

iamlegion

Their calendar was coded. That implies a level of advancement not seen in other so-called ancient cultures.

NSA cracked their calendar and several other writing systems from the mayans.

DarthAni

It is a simple idea, but throughout the world, trade has been a primary life blood of all civilizations. That, and conflict for survival. Many peoples who do not NEED to struggle for the basic means of survival are poorly motivated to develop reason to do so. Comfortable climate, abundant land, food sources and water might be partially to blame. It is similar in many parts of the world.

Where i live, we say we do not have a problem with homelessness because the summers will kill you. The winters will kill you. And you either learn productivity, die, or migrate.

Agreeable environment with abundant resources gave little need to be overly civilized imho.

MustyMackerel

You are ignorant. 40,000 years ago the Europeans, Indians in India, and Native Americans were the same people living in central Asia. This is why Native Americans share many things with Vikings like the longhouse, nature spirits, and much more. Even the swastika and double lighting bolt was used by Native Americans long before Hitler. Even Hitler accepted that the Aryan race came from India. Ill leave proof here , ... and here ... here ... and here

UnknownCitizen

Aliens obvi. Orrrrrr one can take a more academic approach and examine tangible things the differ between great civilizations and the when and how of it. I can’t go into great detail because that would be an exhausting exercise but a primary example would be natural infrastructure. South America has very little in the way of natural infrastructure like planes, rivers, harbor, bays, etc. Brazil is a prime example of the issues that is still causing. Sure, they have tons of water up in the Amazon, but a vast majority of their most fertile natural planes nearly completely lack rivers. So you grow all those crops and can’t get them anywhere to feed people. You may think people could live on the planes but there is very little in the way of salt and easily accessible protein sources. Read up on Salt. It was basically oil before we discovered geology. It was extremely rare (could only be found in known desposits above ground, farmed at sea or consumed through other animals) and required by a person to stay alive. Generally a civilization solves these issues through trade but it’s a bit of a catch 22 on the road situation, especially if they are constantly rained out and muddy as they are in South America. There’s very little in the way of farm lands along the coast. Add to these issues having to fight EVERYONE the second you got ANYTHING accomplished and yeah it makes sense why they were so far behind.

metism

Are you sure the time periods are correct?

everlastingphelps

It's the Noble Savage Myth.

All the actual Mayans I've met are dumb as dirt.

goatboy

The South American's were too busy inventing the potato to worry about all that Civilization nonsense. After they got that figured out, they had to domesticate the Llama and Llama's are stubborn little bastards. With all the time spent fighting potatoes and llamas, they couldn't really focus on anything else. Seriously, have you ever tried to fight a potato? It's exhausting!

Cloudrdr

Don't forget the Coca Leaves.

Caliope

IMHO, YMMV, the ancient civilizations of South and Central America were pretty advanced for that time. Considering they had no modern technology but used manual labor and that labor was done at the behest of "the gods", their efforts were impressive. I think there were really advanced civilizations there (viz The Nazca Lines), but after 10 or 12,000 years, anything electronic or sophisticated would have moldered away. H. Beam Piper's story "Genesis" posited a very interesting theory.

Cloudrdr

If one is acceptable of such considerations ... There is a theory that The Mayans are one of or perhaps the only Ancient Culture which 'Made The Cut' of receiving the technology and wherewithal to ESCAPE this Conflicted ROCK.

They are plying the spaceways and presumably living near Saturn.

Take It - Leave It - Up to You.

elitch2

What nonsense.

Eurocuckistan

most of the old ruins scattered across the world are from before the ~12,000bc cataclysm, don't believe any date they put to these structures and their civilizations.

even the Maya's themselves always claimed that they didn't build the structures, they inherited them from previous generations and they always spoke about great cataclysms that engulfed the earth and destroyed pretty much all of it. all old cultures that of this through religion and myths.

Maroonsaint

Those Jre episodes were interesting as shit. Not the one where they argued that was just annoying. The best is the one where they got em both on

TrialsAndTribulation

I was going to post nearly the same thing as @Eurocuckistan , even down to the references. The only thing I'd add is a recommendation for the book, "The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture" by Firestone, West, and Warwick-Smith. Richard Firestone is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore laboratory and cogently challenged the accuracy of the C-14 test in North America due to the amount of carbon and radiation that was introduced by the cataclysm over 12,000 years ago.

Judgejewdy

Ok, even still, why couldn’t they advance beyond that if they were around for 13,000 years.... and does that mean the pyramids etc are even older than reported? Or roman aqueducts? Is their lack of advancement bc they had no access to other cultures? (Unlike Europe/Asia/Middle East)? Anyway, I still feel like we’re suppised to be overly impressed with them. Maybe I am if the dates are older. But other than that, big nothing burger.

Eurocuckistan

According to the Mayan themselves they themselves were a savage cannibalistic race that had civilization brought to them by a white 'wizard'. that explains their calendar, culture, and fixation of the stars. My guess is that they didn't really understand most of what they were given and the only thing left was their fixation on the stars and general maintenance of their structures. It's the same thing all over the world, Egypt included, that the older structures were all built much better and newer generations could never get close to the previous ones.

The pyramids are, according to people like Graham Hancock, possibly much older then what the narrative tells us. There is some evidence that supports it, weather-erosion on the Sphinx. Robert Schoch is an expert on this, great stuff if you're interested. Combine this with the fact that most parts of the ground surrounding the pyramids is forbidden for further excavation and many believe there's huge underground facilities there, iirc sonar readings showed signs of this. Gobekli Tepe too, goes against the general narrative of our history and the majority of it has not been excavated and it is forbidden to do so.

pauly_pants

They did well considering their lack of resources (domesticated beasts of burden) and trading partners. The old world 'began' sooner and had many more nations working on different things and all fighting each other. War is an evolutionary selection pressure on societies. China has a very long history of being a stable unit for lack of a better term. Many more people over a greater amount of time means more discovery, inventions etc. Mayans and Aztecs were much more isolated compared to the old world but managed some respectable achievements.

SpottyMatt

Largely this and farming: there's a fascinating book called "Lost City of the Monkey God" which is mostly an archaeological memoir but at the end talks about the extinction of the central American civilizations, in order to give that a fair treatment has to speculate on why they were prime extinction material when the Europeans arrived, which gets into the differences between the great civilizations on the various continents.

Big things central Amerocan civs didn't have:

  • large domestic livestock (cows, oxen, borses, etc)
  • high natural selective pressure: European civilizations were nearby in constant conflict for centuries, honing their competitive edges & eliminating more "chill" groups. The middle American civs were much more separated, because:
  • lack of good /easy transport around the area. Dense, impassable rain forest and incomplete river network. Europe was much more passable with much more coastline which could be used to mitigate impassable land routes.
  • farmland: Jungle is not great for farming as there's not a lot of sun , not a lot of land, and most of the area's nutrition is in the treetrunks, not in the soil. Modern-day rain forest clearing for farming is Less successful than farming in other areas, because of this last reason.
  • Scarcity: Rainforests are lush with plants and animals. This works out well for hunter gatherers. There isn't pressure to optimize, industrialize, specialize, and settle into large civilizations. You can do it, as we saw, but lots of territory full of humans that were not doing it, were also able to survive. Not so in Europe.

Given all that, the growth of the population size and the need to form large civilizations (with accompanying structures) in Central America, is hypothesized to have been on a much slower timetable -if it would've got there at all- than Europe.

zyklon_b

i think those ruins is many years older than what most speculate