Skip to comments.Ancient Mayan Superhighways [Causeways] Found in the Guatemala Jungle
Posted on 01/31/2017 8:22:41 AM PST by BenLurkin
Used by the Maya for travel and transporting goods, the causeways were identified in the Mirador Basin, which lies in the far northern Petén region of Guatemala, within the largest tract of virgin tropical forest remaining in Central America.
Also known as the Kan Kingdom, El Mirador is considered the cradle of Mayan civilization. Prior to its abandonment in 150 A.D., it was the largest city-state in the world both in size 833 square miles and population. It boasted the largest known pyramid in Central America, and was home to at least one million people.
Researchers have known about the presence of these roads since 1967, when British Mayanist Ian Graham published a map of Mirador showing causeways crossing the swamp regions. Now laser-based remote sensing has been used to map the area, providing new insights into the massive system of superhighways.
The Light Detection and Ranging tool, known as LiDAR, is capable of penetrating the thick jungle vegetation at a rate of 560,000 dots per second, producing detailed images that mimic a 3-D view of the scanned areas.
"These causeways are 130 feet wide, up to 20 feet high and in some cases they extend as far as 25 miles," Hansen said.
The first building of the causeway between Mirador and Tindall and Mirador and Nakbe dates to 600 and 400 B.C., while other causeways date from 300 BC to 100 A.D.
(Excerpt) Read more at seeker.com ...
They were also into cannibalism. Highly advanced alright.
Yeah, but did that have a Tourist Information Center with Wifi?
Auto flush toilets?
The weather channel?
I didn’t think so.
And human sacrifice and compare their building bloc architecture.
These pronouncements are ALWAYS political
Vending machines? Free coffee?
I think this is fascinating. Thanks.
Hey, look, an ancient Mayan weigh station!
I suspect they have sacrificed far less people than we have, 58 million and counting...
Litter control by the local VFW.
Oh, I don’t know. People like to think of northern Europe as being civilized but 2,000 ago they did occasional human sacrifices. And the most permanent structures they were able to cobble together were an occasional henge.
Salt and pepper fixed their illegal immigrant problem.
With rare exceptions most peoples around the world practiced human sacrifice at some point.
The biggest ceremonial achievement of Jesus was to cause the practice of human sacrifice to end everywhere.
Please don’t put Jesus and cultural relativism in the same post
You probably don’t realize but your attempt to equate us with them mixed with Christian betterment of culture demonstrates how weak we are culturally
Newsflash for you respectfully submitted
We are better than the Mayans
They were superstitious savage Maniacs who built stacked blocks to worship elemental Gods and butcher their own people upon
Whoop tee do
No written phonetic language
And so forth
To compare that with Egypt or Athens or Rome is absurd. And wishful thinking fomented by those who ...like I said earlier...want to diminish western culture as nothing more than a long history of social injustice
Now if you wish to compare the Mayan to say other Indian tribes that really went nowhere or to Bantu culture
Then have at it
Two thousand years ago was 17 AD. By that time the Roman Empire controlled all of present day France, Belgium, and parts of today’s Germany and England. There were more than primitive stone structures and stone age mud huts by then.
Still closed like most of the ones I see.
Your article is about 1000 years ago not 2000 and nor am I aware of human sacrifice if Gaul on the level of the Mayans or Aztecs
Western civilization is not just Northern Europe
They were the laggards as you already know
The Med fostered civilization thousands of years prior to this so called civilization in Guatemala etc
I’ve been to Tikal
It ain’t Rome or Athens
I guess they couldn’t keep up w/their own mileage standards and their civilization fell.
If the left outlawed fossil fuels today, I’d guess 99% of the population would die off within a month.
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