Another interesting article for those who like South American Archaeology. The title for this one is- Archaeologists used lasers to find nearly 500 Mesoamerican monuments hidden in the Mexican jungle– We may have more to say on this discovery than the mummies. It would be a mistake to credit a people that had nothing to do with the construction of those sites.
In a study published Monday, researchers describe how they used this kind of laser mapping data to uncover nearly 500 Mesoamerican sites between about 2,000 and 3,000 years old.
The sites are spread across a 32,800-square-mile area in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Vera Cruz, and they may shed light on how the Olmecs and Maya coexisted and shared ideas.
Dating is always subjective and archaeologists and other researchers seem to acknowledge that later occupants of the area would have left material items behind. Those items would confuse the archaeologist in terms of age of the remains.
LIDAR technology is typically used to map the ocean floor, but Inomata’s team had already found that it can pay archaeological dividends. Last year, they used LIDAR to discover a Mayan site called Aguada Fénix in Tabasco, which dates back at least 2,800 years. It’s the oldest and largest Mayan ceremonial complex ever found, and contains a 50-foot-high rectangular plateau that’s nearly a mile long.
Hoping to repeat that success, the researchers examined publicly available LIDAR data collected by the Mexican government between 2017 and 2019, which focused on a jungle area in the southeastern part of the country near the Guatemalan border.
While the technology is impressive, the conclusions are not.
The 3D-mapping revealed 478 separate sites hidden under the tree canopy. The team visited many of the places of foot to confirm the discoveries, since the closest LIDAR can zoom is at a scale of 16 feet. Typically, archaeologists prefer to zoom in five times closer than that – to a scale of about 3 feet.
The monuments can be categorized into five distinct groups based on their architecture and layout, the study suggested. An elevated rectangular structure, like Aguada Fénix, was one type, while another was a conical building with a platform built to the east.
Then archaeologists will always disagree. They say that if you put 4 archaeologists in a room, you end up with 5 different opinions. we have spent at least 25 years studying archaeology and the physical remains. Our conclusion is that these items came from the pre-flood world.
The Olmecs and Mayans merely came across the ruins and used them for whatever purpose they may have had.
Archaeologists disagree as to whether the Olmecs and Maya existed separately in time and geography, as sister cultures, or whether the former birthed the latter.
But the new findings could help clarify the two civilizations’ relationship.
The Mayans’ heyday happened between about 250 and 950 CE, but that’s at least 650 years after the construction date of the youngest of the 478 sites that Inomata’s team discovered. This suggests groups who preceded the Maya built those structures.
Dating backwards is next to impossible especially when you do not have any documents to look to for confirmation. Then, the ancients used different dating systems making dating even tougher for modern archaeologists.
Their theories remind us of a chef who throws spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. That is the best description for these and other researchers.
theoarch 