[HN Gopher] Archaeologists discover tomb of first king of Caracol
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Archaeologists discover tomb of first king of Caracol
Author : divbzero
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-07-14 06:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (uh.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (uh.edu)
| sho_hn wrote:
| Shout-out again to Charles C. Mann's excellent book _1491_. One
| of my most eye-opening reads after 2000, in terms of information
| that I didn 't possess yet, exceedingly well presented.
| acdha wrote:
| I went to a book talk of his (I believe part of the release for
| the follow-up 1493) and liked that he was humble and not afraid
| to acknowledge lack of data or the possibility of being wrong.
| Nice change from the classic "my theory explains everything"
| pitfall.
| sorenKaram wrote:
| Currently reading 1491, and I saw this. Mind-blowing to me that
| archeologists thought that Ancient Americans were so primitive,
| and that it had to be such a battle to demonstrate that no
| these were complex peoples just like everywhere else.
|
| One of my favorite facts is that 3/5 of the worlds produce was
| domesticated in Meso-America. Wild. These civs were pros at
| developing foods.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| No wheel, no bronze/iron and lots of child sacrifice...
|
| But great architecture and urban planning... plus writing and
| math. It's wild.
| Qem wrote:
| > No wheel, no bronze/iron and lots of child sacrifice...
|
| Regarding child sacrifice, we are not faring much better
| today:
|
| "UNICEF's Executive Director Catherine Russell told
| ambassadors that an average of 28 children are killed in
| Gaza every day - "the equivalent of an entire classroom." -
| https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165415
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Mesoamerica had both wheels and bronze. They just weren't
| as widely used because the technologies weren't nearly as
| useful in the Mesoamerican social context.
|
| Human sacrifice occurred and had important religious
| connotations (in terms of very literally keeping the
| universe alive), but it's wildly over-stated as an everyday
| fact of life by chroniclers.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| His book is excellent for dispelling myths of the noble savage.
| These were not angelic tribes of peaceful hunter-gatherers,
| living off the land in harmony with nature, but human beings
| with complex motivations and driven by the same things that
| drive all of us.
| jonah wrote:
| We visited Caracol this spring. What an amazing site.
| timmg wrote:
| Unless they finished the road in the past two years: it's a
| pain to get to.
|
| We went a few years ago and were really surprised it wasn't
| more famous and had more tourists. I feel like there were about
| a dozen tourists visiting the day we went.
| jonah wrote:
| It was amazingly quiet though we did arrive in the afternoon.
|
| The massive road project is making good progress, but still
| has a ways to go. (That being said, I wouldn't hesitate going
| in any regular car.)
|
| (I'm glad we were able to visit before the road was finished
| - we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.)
| aosaigh wrote:
| I'm always (naively) surprised that these sites continue to
| contain new finds like this. I always assume they've been fully
| mapped and searched.
| eth0up wrote:
| Man, there's so much left to discover! South America, Turkiye,
| who knows, but so much.
|
| One fascinating site not getting much attention is Zernaki
| Tepe, near the Van region. Some of it, if I've not confused it
| with something nearby, is buried under 40ft of sediment and its
| accessible parts exhibit some of the finest masonry work yet
| seen, with interlocking blocks, etc.
|
| Estimated at 14k years, and probably older than Gobekli Tepe
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Zernaki Tepe is obviously not from 14k BP. It's a grid plan
| urban center with aramaic inscriptions and thrown potsherds
| that use slip. I also can't find any papers actually arguing
| that it might be anywhere near that old, only some vastly
| more reasonable iron age dates.
|
| What are you looking at that indicates otherwise?
| eth0up wrote:
| I'll have to bow a bit in shame. I was introduced to that
| site through rogue archeologists that differ with official
| consensus. Additionally, the surrounding sites nearby
| convolute my ignorance.
|
| That said, while I can't readily disgorge quality
| references on this area, I suspect we'll soon have some
| compelling arguments that unsettle current consensus.
|
| I apologize for introducing an otherwise fascinating
| archeological discovery with feeble or possibly garbage
| data. And I hope it does not discourage anyone from
| remaining up to date on this area or actively pursuing it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My impression is that archeologists are drowning in way more
| ancient sites than they can possibly investigate.
|
| For example, these thousands of unexpected ancient sites
| they've found in the Amazon using Lidar recently:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/06/a...
|
| One unfortunate reality is that looters will get to these
| places long before archeologists. I think they try to keep
| things secret, but there are limits to what you can do.
|
| I think this is where a few humble billionaires can make a real
| difference, in case they're reading this :)
| hobs wrote:
| Correct, most archeology digs take decades because A) its
| hard work and you have to do it very precisely (and also
| we're always inventing new tech and wondering how to keep
| stuff in the ground) and B) There's very little money funding
| it - active digs might be a few weeks a year in the best of
| cases, and the rest of the time just trying to get money to
| pay the grad students basically nothing to help.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| When I've gone down the Wikipedia article of ancient sites,
| it's amazing how many have basically been visited for 2-3
| summers by a professor and some grad students, with years or
| even decades between visits due to funding issues or whatever
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| To say archaeology has shoestring budgets would be
| insulting to shoestrings. When I was working as a field
| archaeologist, I would do expeditions on less than what I
| make in a month working in tech. There were times when I
| had to seriously consider the financial trade-off between
| the food budget and sample dating.
|
| The financial situation is even worse today.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Bouncing off your point - I was at the Great Wall and someone
| told us that after the need for the wall disappeared,
| villagers were looting bricks from the wall to build the
| things they needed until the government stepped in to stop it
| jonah wrote:
| They truly are - and like you mention - modern tech is
| turning up more and more.
|
| Traveling in Belize, we happened upon multiple un-excavated
| pyramids and other buildings. The landowner or residents knew
| about them and pointed them out to us, but yeah, no one has
| the budget to investigate even a small percentage of what's
| out there.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Funny enough, I was just reading about Percy Fawcett's doomed
| expedition to find the lost city of Z in the Amazon and turns
| out he has been fully vindicated. He went against the general
| scientific consensus of the time that complex civilization
| was impossible and the area he is thought to have disappeared
| in the Xingu Park has since been found to hold a civilization
| of 20+ settlements and a peak populations of up to 50,000
| inhabitants.
|
| Wild stuff.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Same - it's like when I was kid and thought we had visited
| every planet but meanwhile we've only been to the moon a few
| times.
| protocolture wrote:
| After watching >9000 hours of time team the impression I get is
| that they tend to take what they believe is a representative
| sample of a site, and leave the rest for future teams.
|
| Time Team would often go "This site has been dug before BUT we
| get to put our pits down in this untouched area" or "OMG
| Totally new site but we dont want to wreck it for the next
| guys"
|
| Etc etc/
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the change in modern public record of the Maya during the
| lifetime of Arlen and Diane Chase is hard to overemphasize.
| "Blood of Kings" (book) is a search term.
| soperj wrote:
| all i can find is the medieval fantasy novels?
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