Ancient Empires

[SubGod22]

I'm by no means a scholar on such topics, but I have always had an interested fascination to some of the ancient cultures. My interest started with Egypt and their mythology and expanded to Greece and Roman. Three of my four dogs in adulthood have been named after ancient goddesses. But my interest has never been relegated to the Mediterranean societies. I fell in love with learning about the Inca, Mayan and Aztec empires as a kid and then eventually that grew into others like the Celtic and Norse societies and eventually into some of the Asian cultures within Japan and China and such.

I was about to title this thread something along the lines of The Mayan Empire, because that's what this first post is about to be about, but I want to keep it open to others as well. Be it simple discussion or things we discover as we move forward or whatever it may be. I'm trying to learn to title some of these in a way where it's inclusive to similar areas so I'm not constantly creating new threads for every similar thing.

To get to the point, I came across the following and found it quite intriguing and something I'm hoping to look more into later. It seems that recent surveys and such have found that the Mayan society may have been larger and more developed than previously believed.

Hundreds of Mayan Cities and Towns with Ball Courts and Roads Discovered in LiDAR Survey in Guatemala

Researchers studying the Mayan Empire have discovered that hidden under the rainforests of Guatemala were more than 900 habitations including at least 4 large cities and thousands of yards of raised causeways connecting them.

Together the research reveals the true scope of territorial reach and technological sophistication of the Maya like never before.

The revolutionary method that led to this discovery was a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) survey, which uses lasers to give centimeter-accuracy of the terrain features below a forest canopy, effectively allowing archaeologists to do what used to take decades of expensive excavations with a few fly overs in a plane.

650 square miles across northern Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB) revealed 30 of the famous ball courts of the Ancient Mesoamerican team sport, 195 cement reservoirs which literally drained nearby lakes dry, and 110 miles of elevated walkways connecting 417 villages.

All of this dates to the middle and late Preclassical period of Mayan History, contemporary with such famous events in the Near East as the sack of the ancient Elamite capital of Susa by Assyria, the destruction of the Temple of Solomon by the Babylonians, and the Greco-Persian Wars including the Battle of Thermopylae.

The past 40 years of traditional excavations in the MCKB revealed around 56 sites, including the city of El Mirador, which contains the largest stone pyramid in the history of the Mayan world, La Danta. 205,508 limestone blocks comprise La Danta, and since it’s even larger than the great pyramid of Giza, would likely have required 6 to 10 million days of labor to build.

I have no idea if anyone else is interested in or enjoys any of the ancient histories. I know it's not a subject for everyone, but a few of us history nerd types exist.

This also reminds me that I need to look and see more about the discovery down around Ark City a few years back. I haven't heard anything from it in a while but I know there was a lot of excitement when they first discovered it and I believe some sort of museum was to be setup. The Entzanoa or something?

I also took a vacation a little over a year ago to the four corners region to spend some time learning and appreciating those old cultures. I'd always been fascinated with the cliff dwellings near Durango and finally got to see them in person. Also spent some time in New Mexico, Utah and Arizona visiting sites. I love those old cultures.

[Kung Wu]

Check out "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix if you haven't already seen it. It's really thought provoking. It's about a guy's theory that there may have been quite advanced ancient cultures that were all but wiped out at the end of the last ice age around 11,700 years ago when the Earth was suddenly flooded. His evidence is pretty compelling and aligns with the type of discoveries you quoted.

[SubGod22]

Check out "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix if you haven't already seen it. It's really thought provoking. It's about a guy's theory that there may have been quite advanced ancient cultures that were all but wiped out at the end of the last ice age around 11,700 years ago when the Earth was suddenly flooded. His evidence is pretty compelling and aligns with the type of discoveries you quoted.

I'll have to check it out. I have seen some interesting theories on a lot of things. Some have at least slightly compelling evidence to support their beliefs and some are obviously grasping at straws. But I do enjoy hearing them all. I'm also a huge fan of the sci-fi movie, and subsequent multiple series, Stargate, which had a archeologist who was ostracized by his colleagues because of his thoughts on the ancient pyramids. They also ended up bringing in a lot of mythology from numerous cultures which I always enjoyed. So who's to say that some of the more outlandish thoughts my not have some truth to them.

It is also interesting when you mention the great flood, that cultures all over the world have stories about that. Then there's the link, or lack there of, of the pyramids in Africa and Central and South America. And apparently the one mentioned in the above article is larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. What the hell is Stonehenge and why/how did they pull those massive stones from so far away and place them there? I believe some stones have at least reportedly been traced to Wales which I want to say is 150 miles or so away.

There's so much that we truly don't know and we can only go off of what we do discover and try to piece things together as best we can. But it all sparks that little part of me that thinks what if or what could be.

I'm a nerd. I'm okay with that.

[WstateU]

Check out "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix if you haven't already seen it. It's really thought provoking. It's about a guy's theory that there may have been quite advanced ancient cultures that were all but wiped out at the end of the last ice age around 11,700 years ago when the Earth was suddenly flooded. His evidence is pretty compelling and aligns with the type of discoveries you quoted.

I binge-watched a couple of weeks ago; definitely recommend it.

[SubGod22]

The Aztecs were smarter than some of us.

Aztecs Used the Mountains to Create Sophisticated Farming Calendar that Even Accounted for Leap Years: Study

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

In the early 16th century, the largest city in Spain had a population of less than 50,000, whereby in contrast the land the Spanish were on the verge of conquering could sustain millions.

By this time, the people living in the Mexican Basin had been using a calendar so precise, that it allowed them to time the planting of their crops to avoid the dangers of hot dry springs and summer monsoons, and detect both equinoxes, as well as both solstices, and leap years.

Research now compiled by the University of California, Riverside, shows how the Aztec, or Mexica as they called themselves, were able to achieve such accuracy in timing the seasons and the weather.

“We concluded they must have stood at a single spot, looking eastwards from one day to another, to tell the time of year by watching the rising sun,” said Exequiel Ezcurra, distinguished UCR professor of ecology who led the research.

It all makes sense, that they used where the sun rose to plan and dictate different aspects of their lives. Perks of being surrounded by mountains that can give you distinct horizons in which to do it. It's pretty cool how they built a specific structure to identify the perfect time to start planting an such.

I think many of us have grown up hearing about the accuracy of the Mayan Calendar, though I don't recall any specifics as to how/why they achieved it, just that they did. I don't recall hearing any such talk about the Aztecs until about 10 minutes ago when I started reading the linked article.

I also enjoy the fact that we tend to view things through a European lens when it comes to history and technology and such and I think generally assume that the native peoples of the Americas, and elsewhere, were inferior because they were different. Yes, there were certain advancements made in Europe that were superior, but there's also something to be said for some of the things that these "lesser" people discovered or created that were just as advanced, if not more so, than their European counterparts.

[SubGod22]

WSU - Wichita State professor uncovers forgotten native nation that could 'revolutionize' history of the Great Plains

The Great Plains has often been overlooked in the history books of North America, but recent discoveries made by a team of Wichita State University archaeologists are rewriting the history of where the beating heart of North American actually was in the pre-historic era before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

According to research findings by Dr. Don Blakeslee, professor of anthropology and archaeologist at Wichita State, it turns out that the Great Plains was much bigger and much more politically and economically influential in North America than previously thought.

In 2018, Blakeslee discovered the forgotten town of Etzanoa outside of Arkansas City, Kansas. But what he didn’t know until now is the true extent of what lies underground: An entire nation of ancestors of today’s Wichita tribe towns — called Quivira — totaling more than 200,000 people, who traded goods all across North America and who even had a previously unknown common language.

While some early Spanish documents mention Quivira, the region’s significance was until now unknown to the modern understanding of pre-historic North America before Columbus.

“It’s going to revolutionize our view of the Great Plains societies, and it already has for me and my students,” Blakeslee said. “Charles Mann wrote (in the book) ‘1491’ about the thriving Native American societies before the time of Columbus in South America, Central America and the American Southeast, but when he talked about the Great Plains, he called them distant and sparsely populated and occupied by hunters and gatherers. No. In its day, Quivira was probably the most important native political unit in what’s now the United States.”

The people who created Quivira arrived in Kansas in the late 1300s, and Quivira was fully formed around 1450. The archaeological evidence shows that they grew crops but also hunted bison in huge numbers. Over 80% of the chipped-stone artifacts from the town of Etzanoa are specialized for processing bison products, and documentary evidence shows that these products were exported from coast to coast.

This discovery shattered the previous understanding of who the people of the Great Plains were — from hunters and gatherers to a continent-spanning unit.

Quivira is barely mentioned in history books because it was as remote as one could get from the early European colonies. Only three Spanish expeditions visited it between 1541 and 1601, and only two of them left documentary records. By the time of the first French visit in 1719, the nation was already in a steep decline.

Its collapse started around 1610, when the Spanish founded Santa Fe and initiated a slave trade based on captives from the plains. The French in Canada and the English in Virginia and South Carolina soon joined them in supplying arms to their native allies in exchange for war prisoners. As a result, raiders from the west had horses and steel-topped weapons, while those from the east were armed with guns. The raids and diseases that Europeans brought to the continent destroyed Quivira around 1700.

Blakeslee’s findings — which he will present at the annual Society for American Archaeology meeting March 30-April 2 — focus on three types of evidence discovered about Etzanoa and Quivira: the documentary evidence, the linguistic evidence and the archaeological evidence.

This really could be a game changer on what we know and how we perceive the indians from the plains. I'm guessing we all grew up learning about plains tribes that migrated with the animals and had a relatively simple social construct. New evidence seems to indicate that there were actually some very large and permanent communities as well as a vast cultural exchange.

I'm really excited to learn more about this down the road.

[ShockTalk]

WSU - Wichita State professor uncovers forgotten native nation that could 'revolutionize' history of the Great Plains



This really could be a game changer on what we know and how we perceive the indians from the plains. I'm guessing we all grew up learning about plains tribes that migrated with the animals and had a relatively simple social construct. New evidence seems to indicate that there were actually some very large and permanent communities as well as a vast cultural exchange.

I'm really excited to learn more about this down the road.

When they first came out, I found the 2018 articles fascinating and very sad at the same time. Due to Europeans merely exploring the "new world", these great civilizations would have been severely damaged by diseases they had no immunity to. However, as was mankind at the time (not that this is still not around), they had to also conquer, control and enslave at a level of power these people had not seen before.

[SubGod22]

Another follow up to Etzanoa. I'm obviously fascinated by this and want all of the information. Can't wait to hear more as this develops. I wish I had more information on my native heritage.

KAKE - WSU archeology team discovers indigenous merchant empire in Kansas

“We’ve been able to document that the land area of Quivira was larger than the Republic of Ireland,” he said. “The archeological evidence says that, yes, there was Etzanoa. But there were other very large towns in Cowley County, Butler County, Sumner County, Rice County, and McPherson County. So, I estimate a nation of maybe 200,000 people in 1600. The largest by land area and population of any native nation in what’s now the United States and, economically, the most important one.”

The advanced nature of that empire is evident, the team says, in the shards of pottery vessels McKellop oversees.

“They used mussel shell,” she said, mixed in with the clay. “Which, when you use mussel shell, it’s very (useful) in thermal shock resistance as well as – basically it’s able to withstand heat for long durations of time. But it also acts to pre-shrink the vessels prior to firing.”

While Blakeslee says those who lived at Etzanoa were farmers, it was the American Bison that actually made them an economic powerhouse.

“All across North America, people were wearing body armor made out of bison rawhide,” he said, adding they also exported the meat - after figuring out how to keep it fresh for years. That’s something Blakeslee and his team learned from the records of Spanish explorers.

“Tracking all of the early Spanish expeditions, it turns out there were constant references to this big level area with sandy soil and huge towns where people were hunting lots of cows and supplying meat and other products,” Blakeslee explained.

[SubGod22]

Proof that the Mayans were ahead of their time in size and scope of their civilization.

Ancient Mayan City Hidden for Over 1,000 Years Discovered by LiDAR

LiDAR has done it again: pyramids, a ballcourt, and columns built by the late Mayan Empire over 1,000 years ago were discovered under the forest canopy thanks to the hi-tech surveying device.

The site is located in the largely-unexplored forested region in the Mexican state of Campeche, an area of 1,150 square miles near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.

Named Ocomtún, the word for ‘column’ in the Yucatec Mayan language, the city’s nucleus stretches for 123 acres centered around a stone pyramid.

Several plazas, a ballgame court, and the stone columns that gave Ocomtún its name surround the pyramid, all believed to be built between 250 CE and 1,00 CE.

“The site served as an important center at the regional level, probably during the Classic period,” said Ivan Šprajc, an anthropologist at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, who participated in the survey project alongside several Mexican institutions.

“The most common ceramic types that we collected on the surface and in some test pits are from the Late Classic (600 – 800 CE); however, the analysis of samples of this material will offer us more reliable data on the sequences of occupation”, detailed the doctor in anthropology.

The discovery began with LiDAR surveys in March of 2023, revealing multiple prehispanic structures in an area bigger than Luxembourg.

[SubGod22]

Legend confirmed?

Mythical City of Underground Labyrinths Found Beneath Altar of 15th Century Church in Mexico

Is there anything in science more exciting than when an ancient legend is confirmed by modern research?

Archaeologists in Mexico were able to experience this exact triumph when they found evidence that a mythical underground city lies undisturbed beneath the altar of a church—exactly where a Spanish legend stated it would.

In the time of Babylon, there emerged from Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley a culture known as the Zapotec which could create monumental stone architecture, sophisticated crafts and artwork, as well as a written and spoken language that predated Mayan, Mixtec, and Aztec. They were among Mesoamerica’s first great civilizations, and existed longer than perhaps any other, from 700 BCE to the time of Spanish conquests when they were part of the Aztec Empire.

Legend has it that the Zapotec built a great labyrinthine city called “Lyobaa,” or “place of rest,” centered around a large cavity found in the earth which they believed was the gateway to the underworld.

Later, venturing Spanish missionaries were so repulsed and frightened to explore more than a few yards into the tunnel network that they “ordered [the] infernal gate to be thoroughly closed with masonry,” wrote a Dominican chronicler named Francisco Burgoa.

[SubGod22]

2,000-year-old Roman House Uncovered in Malta Reveals Ancient History of Wealthy Society

A research team from the University of South Florida has discovered a 2,000 year-old house that once belonged to a wealthy family—still in exceptional condition—during an excavation in Malta.

They collaborated with scientists from around the world on the Melite Civitas Romana Project, uncovering what life was like 2,000 years ago when Romans ruled Malta, the island in the Mediterranean Sea that was a center for both military staging and maritime trade.

Nestled in the heart of the ancient city of Melite, the once lavishly decorated mansion, traditionally known as Roman Domus, had been covered by centuries of soil.

“In use between the 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE, the Domus was elegantly decorated with mosaic floors, wall frescoes and marble decorations,” said Davide Tanasi, the professor and director of the University’s Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx), who lead the team of six students.

“During the Roman Empire, it was certainly used as a residence by a representative of the emperor or some very wealthy individual very close to the imperial court.”

After a summer of digging, processing and cleaning artifacts of the Roman Domus, the team discovered a portion of a previously unknown house adjacent to the domus with nearly 10-foot-tall walls, a height Tanasi says is unheard of for the Roman residential units usually found in the Mediterranean area.

[SubGod22]

Spy Satellite Photos Reveal Hundreds of Long-Lost Roman Forts, Challenging Decades-Old Theory

Declassified photos captured by United States spy satellites launched during the Cold War have revealed an archaeological treasure trove: hundreds of previously unknown Roman-era forts.

Corona and Hexagon were two satellite surveillance programs meant to support the Carter Doctrine of US dominance of the Middle and Near East, but now archaeologists are using their declassified aerial photos of landscapes long lost to map the presence and nature of the eastern border of the Roman Empire.

The research team from the Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, poured over the photographs and compared them to a map produced in 1934 by a Jesuit missionary named Father Antoine Poidebard, who was also an archaeologist.

His survey was the first to map the presence of Roman forts in the area from the sky, and it was a flawed yet monumental achievement that confirmed the existence of 116 Roman fortified structures that created the working theory that they represented a wall of men and forts to protect the eastern border.

Now however, the Hexagon and Corona photos are changing the narrative from one of security of the nation to the security of a dynamic and fluid border of trade routes and cultural interchange that the Romans relied on for import and export.

“Agriculture and urbanization have destroyed a lot of archaeological sites and features to a shocking degree,” Archaeologist Jesse Casana told CNN. “This old imagery allows us to see things that are often either obscured or no longer extant today.”

[SubGod22]

Does the Viking culture go back much further than we think?

Archeologists Confirm Oldest Viking Ship Burial in All Scandinavia - Could Rewrite the Viking Age

County archaeologists have recently dated the remains of a Viking ship burial on a small island called Leka and found it to be the oldest one in all of Scandinavia.

In fact, it dates back so far, there’s a technical question about whether or not one can even call it a Viking ship burial, because funerary activities pre-date the Viking Age, when the term Viking began to be used for a Scandinavian mariner who spent some time trading and some time raiding.

The Herlaugshaugen burial mound in Leka is located in an archaeologically rich area called Namdalen. Here, there is a very unusually high concentration of burial mounds, but while most are unsurveyed and unexcavated, Herlaugshaugen had been excavated at three different times.

Records from the 18th and 19th centuries show that the mound contained construction materials like nails, a bronze cauldron, animal bones, and a seated skeleton with a sword. These have long since disappeared and interest in Herlaugshaugen for Norway’s recent ancestors concluded.

Now, a team of archaeologists and a professional metal detective went to survey the mound as part of a collaboration with the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Trøndelag County Authority.

They found iron nails and other evidence to suggest that the mound was the site of a ship burial, in which a man was interred around 700 CE, decades before the generally accepted start points of the Viking Age.

Furthermore, the ship was very large. Historians often credit the boat-building methods developed by the Scandinavians as one of several trends and forces that launched the Viking Age, but here, the appearance of a large sea-worthy vessel means that the technology and the will, capabilities, and commercial interests all existed to use it even before the 700 CE date.

[SubGod22]

Eagle - Archeologists map lost cities in Ecuadorian Amazon, settlements that lasted 1,000 years

Archeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago.

A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, " I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding Thursday in the journal Science.

Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.

“It was a lost valley of cities," said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It's incredible.”

The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between around 500 B.C. and 300 to 600 A.D. — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.

Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 33 feet (10 meters) wide and stretched for 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers).

While it’s difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants — and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, a study co-author at the same French institute. That's comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London, then Britain’s largest city.

“This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society,” said University of Florida archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. “For the region, it’s really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is.”

I've always been fascinated with the civilizations of the Americas and it's a shame that we don't have near the historic documentation from them that we do from those in Europe and Asia. The more we learn, the more we find out just how much more complex and advanced they were than at least what we were lead to believe in our youth.

[SubGod22]

Rethinking Mayan royalty?

Jade Funerary Mask of Great Mayan King Found at Little-Known Site in Guatemala

At a little-known historical site from the Mayan Empire in Guatemala, the jade funerary mask of a great king was discovered by archaeologists.

In the country’s northeastern state of Peten, the city of Chochkitam, which dates to the Pre-Classic Period of Mayan history, was first discovered in 1909, but a chamber underneath the royal pyramid that had been missed by tomb robbers was identified using LiDAR.

A team from Tulane University in Louisiana and the Univ. of Alabama, along with Guatemalan representatives and scientists, then began excavating the chamber and discovered a treasure trove of continental significance.

Inside were a human skull, a stone coffin-like box, other human bones carved with hieroglyphs, funerary offerings of oyster shells and ceramics, and pieces of jade which when placed together formed the stunning mask seen above.

“Everything suggests to me that this was a Maya king who was part of a network of Maya royalty in the sphere of influence of Tikal and Teotihuacán,” said Francisco Estrada-Belli, a professor at Tulane University, speaking with Nat Geo.

Alexandre Tokovinine, a University of Alabama epigraphist, deciphered the hieroglyphs on the bones and found they contained the name “Itzam Kokaj Bahlam,” which is believed to be the name of the king who ruled Chockitam nearly 1,700 years ago.