Thread 17924908

BREAKING: Airborne lidar just exposed the jungle's asscheeks. Scans show 60,000+ structures hidden under Guatemala's canopy. Revised population: 7-11 million peak (not 1-2M like boomer textbooks claimed). Massive infrastructure: Causeways, reservoirs, fortifications, farms. Urban sprawl covered 90% of available land in some zones. Total area: 2,100 sq km of pure unadulterated civilization

Key truthbombs:

> Density = 500 people/km2 - higher than modern LA County
> Swamp canals + terraced hills fed this mass
> Fortresses and watchtowers confirm constant state of absolute bloodshed
> Collapse speed: 90% population loss in <150 years when it hit

Unanswered mysteries
> Did they out-Rome Rome with infrastructure
> Why collapse harder than Bronze Age civilizations? (Climate? War? Both?)

Why didn't they clear the jungle?

they learned settled life sucks and went against the grain to leave farmoid life behind obviously
>>17924917
the jungle grew over what used to be farmland (and this is good, actually)

>>17924908 (OP)
Roman era Italy at its peak had around 16 million people, and that was with three breadbasket provinces dedicated to feeding it, no way the mayans achieved those numbers with slash and burn agriculture

>>17925169
The denial has already begun.

>>17924908 (OP)
>Revised population: 7-11 million peak
3-4x the population of MODERN yucatan? yeah I'm gonna call ideologically motivated bullshit

>>17924908 (OP)
>harder than bronze age
Debatable. And yes, both.

>>17924939
The Maya continued being settled agricultural peoples living in cities and making stone buildings all the way until the 16th century and the Spanish conquest. The Classic Maya collapse was a political upheaval in which most of the biggest city-states of one specific region were abandoned, not an apocalyptic complete civilizational collapse.

>>17924939
but the post collapse maya were still settled farmers who were also mercantilistic aztecboos in addition

>>17924908 (OP)
This actually makes more sense and makes their downfall more tragic. It was essentially their scale of urbanism that destroyed their civilization.

Obese squatemalan goblins

>>17925169
Milpa system was superior in terms of making the soil productive than the eurasian rotative systems.

>>17925533
Their civilization went on just fine afterwards and the last few Maya cities only fell to the spanish in the late 1600s though

>muh mayan civilization ended in 900 AD!
>their most famous city is a post-collapse one
explain this contradiction

>>17925169
>slash and burn agriculture
anon, slash and burn is post Columbus, you can't do that with stone axes, you need steel axes for that sort of agriculture

>>17925785
made up chronology

>>17924908 (OP)
If you showed a 1950s mayanist a resume of all our current knowledge of the Mayans I'm pretty sure they would explode.
>>17925169
The Mayans did not use Slash and Burn Agriculture, they had an intricately developed agricultural system. That isn't even necessary in the Mayan Lowlands, because the soil there isn't 99% unadulterated shit like it is in, say, the Amazon.
>>17925690
The Meso-American's habilities for selectively breeding plants are, imo, greatly overlooked.

P.S: It is my belief that most classical sites (the important parts) were abandoned intentionally coinciding with a period of great Climate Catastrophe and war. Rather than as a consequence of that period of upheaval.
I'm also glad low-popcels keep losing.

>>17924908 (OP)
> 9.5-16.5 million

Academia is so infested with political correctness that literally nothing they say anymore can be believed.

>>17925169
roman era Italy ran on different crops though
I think (don't know agriculture well enough to be sure) that Mesoamerica had a more productive agricultural package

>>17924908 (OP)
>15.6 million
>fucking Graham Hancock tier lidar ROFL
>more than LA
>"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
>"Uhm... erm....well...! except when it comes to the achievements of indigenous peoples! in that case, it would be colonialist/imperialist to apply evidentiary standards!"

>>17926528
No need for schizo shit, It's literally just a matter of sensationalist mainstream media selling the Maya collapse as something much more significant than it actually was while still believing outdated first half of the 20th century knowledge and not even bothering to actually learn any of the details about them.

>>17924908 (OP)
>> Density = 500 people/km2 - higher than modern LA County
It would seem our high priests have gotten a little too far from reality. Unfortunately for them, history is cyclical.

>>17924908 (OP)
Didn't they collapse because they destroyed their soil with bad farming practices? Or deforestation or both, something like that. I feel like I remember reading this. Basically resource overshoot to extreme levels. If so yeah extreme population levels + constant warfare would make sense.