[HN Gopher] How the Mayans were able to accurately predict solar...
___________________________________________________________________
How the Mayans were able to accurately predict solar eclipses for
centuries
Author : pseudolus
Score : 117 points
Date : 2025-10-27 11:15 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| pavinjoseph wrote:
| The original RDB!
| photon_garden wrote:
| > The Maya Civilization, from Central America, was one of the
| most advanced ancient civilizations
|
| The Maya are still around! I spent a few months in the Guatemalan
| highlands last year and all the kids in the village spoke
| Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home.
|
| (Young people speaking the language is key to language health.)
| throwup238 wrote:
| I was surprised to find out that there are still many
| indigenous groups with populations in the millions. My
| California public education made it seem like they were all
| pretty much wiped out save for those who survived to the
| various reservation systems.
|
| My favorite group is the Mapuche who managed to hold out
| against the Spaniards until they were conquered by Chile and
| Argentina in the late 19th century. They managed to thwart the
| conquistadors for centuries! It wasn't until the modern era
| where military logistics got good enough to unseat them and
| overcome the advantages they had.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Commanche also held out until after the Civil War.
| beerandt wrote:
| Was always weird to me how "the French and Indian War" had
| Indian involvement almost over emphasized to pretend like
| it wasn't the extension of a European war...
|
| While all the other American conflicts with tons of Indian
| involvement (both sides, esp civil war) had it downplayed.
|
| One of my first realizations of slant put on history.
| tdeck wrote:
| It's more properly a campaign of the Seven Years War,
| which was almost a world war of its time.
| beerandt wrote:
| >like it wasn't the extension of a European war...
| pqtyw wrote:
| The French and Indian war began 2 years before the war in
| Europe. So in a way it was the other way around (of
| course there were much more important factors than what
| was effectively an ongoing proxy war in faraway colonies)
| tdeck wrote:
| My comment wasn't intended as a "correction", just adding
| that historians seem to refer to this war by a different
| name these days. At least in the textbooks I learned
| from, it was discussed in the context of the Seven Years
| War.
| gausswho wrote:
| The Mapuche even expanded their territorial control, in large
| part to their acquisition and mastery of Spanish horses.
| pjbk wrote:
| They also mainly continued to be loyal to the Spanish crown
| after Argentina and Chile went through their independence,
| and carried out the final pacification of the Mapuche
| territories in the 19th century. By then only a very small
| part of the population had not mingled with Europeans.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Even in the US, the Indian Wars weren't finished until the
| 1890s. In fact, most of the big wars against the Native
| Americans took place after the American Civil War. One of the
| big faults I have with US history in the education system is
| that it tends to front-load the depiction of Native Americans
| in the Precolonial portion of history, with an echo in the
| Trail of Tears and forced migration in the 1830s, and largely
| edits them out of the history of the settling of the west,
| despite this process requiring a very violent dispossession
| of the existing inhabitants.
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| > most of the big wars against the Native Americans
|
| As I learned it, most of the conflicts were between not
| against. Native Americans, became a term as a general catch
| all but those peoples saw themselves as quite diverse, and
| as such is something of a misnomer.
| sethammons wrote:
| Look up the american bison. The US government's official
| policy was to eliminate bison to eliminate Indians/First
| Peoples. Mountains of skulls. In under a decade, the
| bison population was pushed down from 30-60M to
| approximately 500 individuals.
|
| Did tribes fight and war and capture slaves? Yes. They
| did that for forever. Then colonization and disease and
| westward expansion. Look up the Trail of Tears, the
| genocide and/or ethnic cleansing.
|
| Your education may align with propaganda. Even today,
| first people nations are actively having their history
| taken. Pete Hegseth, sec of def/war, has pushed to close
| the door on the massacre of wounded knee, enshrining the
| medals earned for slaughtering woman and children.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/us/hegseth-wounded-
| knee.h....
|
| Look up how the US government stole native kids and sent
| them catholic schools to have the Indian taught out of
| them. A system that was purpose built to stop their way
| of life. Or forced, non-consented sterilization of native
| woman that was happening in the 60s and 70s.
|
| If you somehow didn't know the US government's history of
| conflict and abuse of Native Americans, you should
| question your formal education. And you should do some
| light research.
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| you seem used to issuing commands. best of luck with that
| approach. your cherry picked data points may be correct,
| but they are also misleading absent broader historical
| context. these groups had largely diminished already (as
| is well documented by historians of the period), so your
| subsequent points about x/y/z impact although valid don't
| carry weight. imo data driven arguments trump emotional
| appeals. Trail of tears and similar are powerful and
| empathy inducing for sure, but don't change the facts
| around which my comment was based. your presentation
| skews things to a false dichotomy of one group against
| another which is inaccurate and unproductive. current
| politicians (left or right) in the US don't change
| history (and no I didn't bother reading your nytimes
| link...).
|
| > Did tribes fight and war and capture slaves? Yes. They
| did that for forever.
|
| sounds like you're confused what point you are arguing.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| > these groups had largely diminished already (as is well
| documented by historians of the period
|
| this is an obvious contradiction. how could colonial
| historians know that "these groups had diminished" before
| colonialism when they weren't there? troll better
| throwup238 wrote:
| I'm not sure what the GP is referencing specifically (the
| colonization of the Americas took hundreds of years on
| two continents after all) but we've got enough
| archaeological evidence to know that many indigenous
| cultures were in decline by the time the Spaniards first
| visited, and many entered a second decline after first
| contact but before they were conquered or fully
| economically exploited.
|
| For example I've been studying the Mississippi river
| cultures [1] which left behind lots of mound villages
| formed into chiefdoms and paramount chiefdoms. Those
| cultures suffered a decline around the mid-15th century
| likely due to environmental changes which we can see in
| the distribution of villages and mounds changing. We can
| also see how warfare evolved based on defenses and the
| distribution of arable land to houses (i.e. are they
| clustered villages for defense or spread around their
| fields for efficiency?) Historians then compare them to
| the accounts of the Narvaez and de Soto expeditions which
| provides a baseline for post-contact (mid 16th), where we
| can also see a large decline and social restructuring
| before the English and French came in to finish the job
| (the Spaniards more or less gave up on that area as
| economically uninteresting except for the occasional
| slave raid).
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_shatter_zone
| estearum wrote:
| Genocide is bad even if the victims are imperfect human
| beings
| vacuity wrote:
| For that matter, who can be said to be perfect?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Prior to western colonization of course the native people
| had conflicts, just not at the scale the colonizers could
| achieve. During the genocide of the natives some tribes
| used it as an excuse to kill their enemies, sometimes to
| curry favor with a technologically superior force, and
| sometimes just to kill their enemies. Some fought back
| against the invaders, with varying degrees of success.
| Most people just died.
|
| None of that makes it less of a war against the native
| americans.
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| > None of that makes it less of a war against the native
| americans
|
| No that's exactly what it makes it, as their conflicts
| subtract from those with newer arrivals. Different groups
| fighting each other, and then other different groups from
| Europe came, and made allegiances with specific local
| groups, then collaborated in their conflicts.
|
| It's worth understanding that 'western colonization'
| wasn't a singular coherent force. There were different
| foreign groups with different interests - who were
| fighting with each other in North America.
|
| Similarly there were 'Native Americans' (quotes as this
| is a colonial term) pursuing their own interests, even
| going to Europe. I'm not sure it's your perspective but
| there is a popular historic image of native americans
| being a defenceless people who foreigners came and wiped
| out which simply isn't correct, and ironically quite
| colonial.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There were plenty of regional wars among the native
| Americans. None of them resulted in widespread genocide
| and construction of concentration camps and reservations.
| In the initial Spanish 'not western colonization' nearly
| 8 million people died. By the 1900s there was nearly an
| 80% reduction in population and western populations were
| in possession of their resources.
|
| Western nations came, they defeated their enemy, and they
| took their territory. What else do you call that?
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| None of what you said refutes my first point. All your
| points are valid, just missing broader context. 'Native
| American' history didn't begin when Europeans arrived.
| Seems to all boil down to, people A did X bad things to
| people B thus people A are responsible for demise of
| people B, while ignoring everything else that occurred
| with people A - who by the way are only viewed as A by
| people B.
| vacuity wrote:
| > people A did X bad things to people B thus people A are
| responsible for demise of people B
|
| In this case, people A are responsible for most of the
| demise of people B, surely. I don't deny that history
| education should be improved on these matters, instead of
| choosing a villain and a victim, but your view is not
| much better.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Western nations came, they defeated their enemy, and
| they took their territory.
|
| The various tribes also engaged in near constant warfare
| with each other, defeating them, taking their territory,
| and making the rest slaves. Cortez was only able to
| defeat the Aztecs because he was able to enlist the aid
| of the non-Aztec tribes, who hated the Aztecs because of
| the depredations of Aztecs against them.
|
| The Inca empire was only recently formed before the
| Spanish arrived.
|
| In North America, the Commanche carved out an empire in
| the south at the expense of the tribes that had been
| living there. See "Empire of the Summer Moon":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-
| Powerful...
| vacuity wrote:
| Can one not say that both the tribes and the Westerners
| committed atrocities? I think most people in this thread
| who agree with the latter group would be willing to
| include the former group. And you are ignoring the
| relative scales.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes, there was plenty of bad behavior on both sides.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's really hard to read this comment as anything other
| than "don't worry about the genocidal policy of the US
| with regards to the natives, for they were a violent
| people."
|
| Indeed, it's actually an example of problem I lamented:
| the disinterest in covering Native American history post-
| founding of the US. The last of major conflicts between
| different Native American tribes took place around the
| 1850s, the lingering effects of the Lakota being pushed
| onto the Plains [1]. From that point on, all of the main
| conflicts are between the US and the various Native
| American tribes for a variety of reasons, although mainly
| "the US wants your land and isn't going to take 'no' for
| an answer."
|
| [1] If you want to analyze the broader historical
| context, you of course have to ask "why did the Lakota
| move onto the Plains?" and following that thread of logic
| leads you to the first cause being "the English settled
| on the eastern coast."
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| > It's really hard to read this comment as anything other
| than "don't worry about the genocidal policy of the US
| with regards to the natives, for they were a violent
| people."
|
| This is a wild jump to make. I'm not sure I can take your
| comment in good faith as being serious.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I had the benefit of being able to write that comment
| after seeing the other replies you wrote to sibling
| comments, and those comments reinforce the impression
| that you believe in the inaccurate stereotype of Indians
| as "noble savages."
| tdeck wrote:
| This is also a difference in outcomes between traditional
| colonialism (where indigenous people were viewed as a source
| of labor) and settler colonialism (where indigenous people
| are viewed simply as "in the way"). That's not to say that
| traditional colonialism is in any way acceptable, however.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Relatively (adjusted by area and duration) not that many
| people from Spain moved to the Americas between 1500 and
| ~1800, especially compared to the British colonies in North
| America.
|
| So they couldn't murder/expel (unlike the British/American
| colonists) most of the native population (especially
| considering that North America was much less densely
| inhabited to begin with) if they wanted someone to work in
| the mines and plantation (again relatively not that many
| slaves were imported to the mainland colonies as well).
|
| France was similar (except they struggled even more with
| getting enough people to move to the colonies).
| tdeck wrote:
| The Maya are still around, but the Maya civilization's
| institutions were all destroyed. And the Spanish made a point
| of seeking out all the Maya books [1] they could find and
| burning them. So a lot of knowledge was lost.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices
| Cantinflas wrote:
| The link doesn't mention "seeking out" those books, in fact
| it mentions catholic priests both burning and lamenting the
| burn.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| I guess that is implied since these things always happen
| this way, its not like book burners are just having a nice
| campfire and the books they dislike just happen to be close
| by.
| jacobolus wrote:
| They hunted down all of the libraries, collected all of the
| books inside, and burned them in massive bonfires,
| accidentally saving a total of like 3 books which had
| already been shipped back to Europe as trophies. I think
| there are also some remaining fragments of a few others.
| One Spaniard wrote about it:
|
| > _We found a large number of books in these characters
| and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to
| be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them
| all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which
| caused them much affliction._
| antognini wrote:
| It is worth noting that the friar who organized this book
| burning was recalled to Spain to stand trial on account
| of his actions.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Why is that worth noting?
| hnidiots3 wrote:
| Because it might not have been the "Spanish", but certain
| people who ruined history. So it's not fair to blame a
| whole country for the actions of a few.
| jacobolus wrote:
| It's pretty fair to blame the entire social and political
| system of 16th century Spain, which at that time was
| centered on religious persecution, mass murder, large-
| scale theft and exploitation, and quasi-slavery, leading
| to centuries of profoundly racist tyranny in the
| Americas. The book-burning cultural genocide was just the
| cherry on top.
|
| (As is common for feudal occupiers of foreign lands, and
| by no means unique to Spain) the worst kinds of
| psychopaths were continually elevated to positions of
| authority and then granted almost complete impunity to do
| what they wanted, with an ideology that treated the
| recipients of their exploitation as sub-human.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| It's really not sane to do so, today.
|
| You're literally applying birth sin for it to make sense,
| because none of the Spanish people alive today had
| anything to do with it
|
| Even worse, what hnidiots3 was trying to convey: 99% of
| the population that were alive during the time period
| you'd have described as "Spaniards" were entirely
| uninvolved in these actions, and wouldn't have supported
| them either, likely.
|
| While the Mayan culture was literally doing human
| sacrifices - the average person living in Spain wasn't
| inherently evil and wanting to cause suffering to other
| people. Despite their culture being kinda shit.
|
| They just wanted to live their live, which was mostly
| being a farmer and working.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The Spanish state (crown, army, church) had just gone
| through several centuries of horrific mass-murder of non-
| Christians in Spain, where the most brutal and sadistic
| thugs were politically elevated. The local church was
| dominated by the notorious Inquisition.
|
| We're not talking here about some random peasants living
| somewhere in the Iberian peninsula, nor about the Spanish
| people of 2025, but about the genocidal organization in
| control in the 16th century.
|
| > _While the Mayan culture was literally doing human
| sacrifices - the average person living in Spain wasn 't
| inherently evil_
|
| Can you see how this absurd double standard may come
| across as racist?
|
| At that time the Spanish crown and church weren't doing
| "human sacrifice" (as defined by themselves).... they
| were just torturing people to death and doing ritualistic
| public executions (e.g. by burning alive) of those
| considered to be non-believers, heretics, or enemies of
| the state.
|
| On the other side of the coin, it's not like the "average
| person living in Maya kingdoms" (i.e. some peasant farmer
| just trying to make a living in a feudal society) was
| responsible for their own political elites' ritual
| execution of captured enemies.
| nickpp wrote:
| You guys remind me of the old joke:
|
| A Mexican goes to Spain, accosts the first Spaniard he
| sees, and lays into him: "I demand an apology, sir - your
| ancestors pillaged my country!"
|
| The Spaniard blinks. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. Your
| ancestors did that. Mine stayed home."
| darkwater wrote:
| I understand it's a joke and it is partially true but
| also there are still direct descendants of Central and
| South America original peoples, and also many Spanish
| families that exploited the conquered lands came back to
| the "mother land" and kept their families there.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The Spanish crown also repeatedly sent new waves of
| political allies to take over political control in the
| Americas, to counter the consolidation of power of the
| descendants of previous generations of Spanish rulers.
| There was a fair amount of conflict and intrigue between
| the two groups.
| reactordev wrote:
| Mmmmmm, Black Sails...
|
| Let's not forget the slaves sent to the fields after
| Spanish conquest. Irish, African, Portuguese, Indian, all
| found their ways to the sugar canes.
|
| That era was literally groups of humans exploiting every
| other group of humans they could find.
|
| The first wave owners children found themselves going to
| war with the crown or being a member of the crowns second
| wave to further entrench the royal riches. It became
| extremely political.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The wrongs of religion throughout history are typically
| exaggerated in modern times and the Spanish Inquisition
| is one of the best examples of this. It lasted more than
| 350 years and during this 350 years a very high-end
| estimate of executions is 5000. So the death toll from it
| ranges probably from one person every ~3 months to one
| person every month. [1]
|
| So for some comparison, 2-5x more people die in the US of
| lightning strikes each year than died during the Spanish
| Inquisition per year. Obviously any death is undesirable,
| but describing it as a horrific mass-murder is
| hyperbolic. It was rather more a mass public shaming
| campaign like the Chinese Struggle Sessions, but many
| orders of magnitude smaller in scale.
|
| For that matter even the Mayans were likely sacrificing
| people on a far larger scale. We lack exact numbers but
| know that they did group sacrifice, often of children,
| and that this was regularly done when building new
| structures, or for hopes of a good crop season and the
| like. And I think the thing that makes human sacrifice
| particularly primitive in its nature is that obviously
| doesn't work. Whether you killed a dozen kids or not has
| no bearings on how your crops grow. And so they would
| have to, over centuries, continue to reject the evidence
| before their eyes.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#D
| eath_toll...
| jacobolus wrote:
| The Inquisition was mostly about mopping up the last few
| practicing Jews and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula,
| terrorizing them into conversion and conformity.
|
| Millions of people (on all sides) were killed in the
| Reconquista, over a few centuries, with many others
| enslaved, imprisoned, driven out of the peninsula, or
| forcibly converted. Those who converted to Catholicism
| were rewarded with centuries of further discrimination
| and persecution. (Disclaimer: I am not expert enough to
| know detailed figures here; feel free to search for
| expert sources if you want something precise.)
|
| Scattered lightning strikes are not meaningfully
| comparable to large-scale genocidal war.
| StarGrit wrote:
| > The Spanish state (crown, army, church) had just gone
| through several centuries of horrific mass-murder of non-
| Christians in Spain, where the most brutal and sadistic
| thugs were politically elevated.
|
| That is one hell of a gloss over of the the previous
| 500-600 years before the Inquisition and massively over-
| simplifies what happened. There wasn't really a Spanish
| state either, certainly not as we would understand it
| today.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > had just gone through several centuries of horrific
| mass-murder of non-Christians in Spain,
|
| Well it varied, but such behaviour was not strictly
| unique to Spain in those days. Being a Catholic in
| England wasn't terribly exciting either.
|
| Then you have the witch hunts across must of Europe which
| resulted in probably well over 10x times more people
| being murdered in Germany alone compared to the
| inquisition and they weren't really a thing in Spain.
|
| In a way the Spanish Inquisition was quite similar to the
| NKVD or the Gestapo/etc. since the persecutions were
| usually intended to impose ideological/social conformity
| (or inherently racist in how it targeted even perfectly
| honest Jewish or Muslims converts) rather than
| "ritualistic".
|
| Of course Christian Spain is interesting in the sense
| that it turned from one of the most of tolerant societies
| in Europe to the one of the most intolerant ones in a
| couple of centuries.
|
| e.g. during the Almohad invasions you had Christians,
| Jewish and even moderate Muslims fleeing to the Christian
| kingdoms which generally were much more tolerant at the
| time.
|
| > Can you see how this absurd double standard may come
| across as racist?
|
| That's not particularly new in Europe though. e.g. the
| Greeks and Romans found Carthaginian mass child
| sacrifices extremely abhorrent yet at the same time
| didn't see much of an issue with "exposing" unwanted
| infants. Treating violence due to
| economic/utilitarian/political reasons differently that
| doing it for ritual/religious reasons was is still pretty
| ingrained into western culture.
| StarGrit wrote:
| Why do people always ignore what happened before a few
| hundred years before? The Moors invaded Spain and were
| advancing into Europe and moved into what is modern day
| France. It also ignores that Muslims and Christians would
| in-fight between themselves in what is now modern day
| Spain.
| pqtyw wrote:
| Well... I was talking about about what was happening a
| few centuries ago.
|
| Regardless why is it strictly relevant what happened
| 250-800 years before the Iberian kingdoms expelled or
| exterminated their Muslim and Jewish population?
|
| > It also ignores that Muslims and Christians would in-
| fight between themselves
|
| Seems tangential?
| StarGrit wrote:
| > Regardless why is it strictly relevant what happened
| 250-800 years before the Iberian kingdoms expelled or
| exterminated their Muslim and Jewish population?
|
| The Reconquista partially led to the Inquisition. The
| Reconquista started 711 and ended in 1492. How could it
| not be relevant?
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I wasn't calling the descendants of the Mayans out for
| anything. I was specifically talking about the culture.
| Which is synonymous with the people in the upper class,
| which did ritual sacrifices of peasants.
|
| the term Spaniards however targets the average people.
| Which are precisely farmers.
|
| I do not see any double standard whatsoever, and frankly:
| you're brainwashed if you do.
| vacuity wrote:
| Are you saying that the average person in Spain did not
| support colonialism (let's suppose after the benefits of
| colonialism became apparent)? Would they be horrified
| that Spaniards had killed "barbarians" and "savages" (as
| they were described) and gained great riches? Other
| people have brought up religion; how many Christians
| condemned the Crusades?
| pqtyw wrote:
| The initial conquests and the immediate atrocities that
| followed them (arguably the worst period) were mainly
| quasi private enterprises. The state even tried to reign
| them in to some extent due to significant
| social/religious pressure at home. Of course that was
| largely superficial and hardly enforced after boatloads
| of silver and gold started arriving.
|
| The priests and missionaries that followed them were
| likely the group that was most sympathetic to the natives
| (of course only in relative terms compared to the
| "conquistadors" which is a very low standard).
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Duh. But not all Romans!
| wtcactus wrote:
| Because a previous commenter wrongly said, "the Spanish
| made a point of seeking out all the Maya books". It
| wasn't "The Spanish" it were some individual actors
| clearly acting against "The Spanish" crown wishes.
| alex_smart wrote:
| If that is the case, why did the trial absolve him of all
| crimes and why did get consecrated as a bishop by the
| king of Spain?
| wtcactus wrote:
| I'm guessing that his 1st person description of the human
| sacrifices carried out by the Mayan and establishing a
| connection between those and the need to erase the
| culture that enabled them and that he - wrongly or not,
| we can't know anymore - saw as enabled by those books had
| some weight there...
|
| The Spanish crown didn't have in mind to destroy other
| people books, but then again, they also didn't have in
| mind that they casually, recurrently and nonchalantly
| offered human sacrifices to their "gods".
|
| Probably the order of priorities for the Spanish crown
| was books < human sacrifices.
|
| Strange times, those, eh?
| hopelite wrote:
| I would say because it highlights that even back then
| there was the same kind of tension as today between those
| who believe they are doing right, those who also believe
| they are doing right, and right never ending up being
| done in the end. It's like ideological, metaphysical, and
| psychological border disputes and skirmishes, i.e., human
| nature.
|
| Also, failing upwards of those who serve the dominant
| system is clearly not just a modern phenomenon.
| vintermann wrote:
| Because it's not what most people expect.
|
| There was pushback against a lot of the evils of
| colonialism - most of them unsuccessful, like this one.
| Maybe we can learn lessons for fighting against the
| institutional evils of our time.
| rayiner wrote:
| Was Spanish colonization "evil?" What would Latin America
| have been like today in the counterfactual scenario?
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > Was Spanish colonization "evil?"
|
| It's hard to look at the on-the-ground details and come
| to any other conclusion.
| rayiner wrote:
| How so? What would Latin America look like today in the
| counterfactual scenario where the Spanish didn't colonize
| it?
| Larrikin wrote:
| Before anyone wastes their time, this is the same start
| of the other bad faith argument that the enslavement of
| Africans was for their own good and they were better off
| being slaves than being in Africa.
| rayiner wrote:
| Just answer the question instead of resorting to
| whataboutism. Aren't the people who survived Spanish
| colonization better off than they would have been?
| jacobolus wrote:
| Probably not, but this counterfactual depends on the
| circumstances, and depends on your values. For example:
| people might argue about the relative harms of various
| kinds of slavery vs. cultural genocide vs. land
| dispossession and forced displacement ....
|
| After contact there were waves of mass die-off of people
| throughout the Americas due to disease brought from
| Eurasia: are we positing that those deaths still
| occurred? Because they were extraordinarily
| destabilizing. For example, if we hypothetically imagine
| that the balance of disease severity was the other way
| around and 90% of the population of Eurasia was wiped out
| over a century in several waves of horrific pandemics,
| then history would look quite different indeed, and it's
| all but impossible to predict precisely how.
|
| European states other than Spain also did horrific
| atrocities in their conquests and colonial projects. Are
| we positing that we just replace Spanish kingdom(s) with
| some alternative European monarchies? Or are we imagining
| a situation in which peoples of the Americas retained
| some autonomy?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Black Death killed approximately 30-60% of Europe's
| population between 1347 and 1353.
| rayiner wrote:
| Exactly. Your average European alive today likely is
| better off because half their ancestors died of the
| plague.
| Tor3 wrote:
| So the general theory is that if you kill half of the
| population the descendants will be better off? What's the
| mechanism, and what happens if you follow that to its
| conclusion?
| jacobolus wrote:
| Now imagine that happening once per generation for 3 or 4
| generations in a row, followed by / contemporary with
| getting invaded by an alien army with significantly
| superior weapons and ships whose goal was total
| domination and enslavement / elimination.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Prove that without any colonization they would be worse
| off.
| extropic-engine wrote:
| No, they are not better off.
|
| I have provided as many facts for my argument as you have
| for yours.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > Aren't the people who survived Spanish colonization
| better off than they would have been?
|
| "The ends justify the means" is certainly a valid metric
| by which to judge things, but an honest application of it
| leads one to conclusions such as "Mao Zedong was the
| greatest humanitarian to have ever lived" (as seen here:
| https://i.imgur.com/3QUXVi3.jpeg).
| rayiner wrote:
| Mao is bad because he delayed the growth that China was
| capable of achieving and did achieve after Deng Xiaoping.
| 40 years after the communist revolution in 1990, China
| was still as poor as India per capita. In the 35 years
| since then, China became five times richer per capita
| than India. If the Chinese republicans had maintained
| power continuously since 1912, there's a good chance that
| China would be as developed as South Korea or Japan
| today.
|
| It's valid to ask a similar question about the Americas.
| What would life be like for people today? It's probable
| that the Aztecs or their descendants would have taken
| over the Americans, since they were by far the most
| technologically superior. Would they have evolved into a
| prosperous industrialized society today?
| vacuity wrote:
| I find it reasonable to assume that any civilization will
| gradually adapt to meet demands, given whichever
| constraints burden it. Europe (and the US) had
| opportunities (partly due to colonialism) to become
| industrialized and prosperous, and it has taken those
| opportunities. So it is with China. Africa has
| opportunities, but colonialism has made progress
| difficult. In the long term, I think cultural/societal
| differences are not the deciding factor, so much as the
| geopolitical environment shapes society. The formation of
| mountains doesn't much care about the contemporary scale
| of human construction projects, either.
|
| You seem to be saying that colonialism advanced society
| even for the oppressed, but the causality of history is
| complicated. As far as we know, you may as well say that
| the extinction of the dinosaurs as it happened was
| essential for human proliferation. Maybe the dinosaurs
| would've gone extinct at some point, or diminished
| greatly, or maybe the dinosaurs and humans would coexist.
| Just because a somewhat plausible scenario presents
| itself does not mean it is compelling. You have brought
| up counterfactuals, so use your imagination seriously,
| instead of taking the easy way out. If you have a
| motivating belief on the matter, it is untoward to speak
| as if you are unbiased and objective.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| no, they're not, this whole line of thought is explicitly
| white supremacist. shame on you
| Throaway195 wrote:
| Latin America is a horrifically corrupt and inequal
| place, so, no, probably not!
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > How so?
|
| Just speaking personally I have a pretty dim view of
| genocide and slavery.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| This is an alt history story idea I've had rattling
| around in my head for years. It starts off in 1492 with a
| dejected Columbus complaining about Isabella and
| Ferdinand not seeing his vision.
|
| Jump cut 300 years later to 1776, when Europeans first
| learn about the New World - when an Aztec galley lands in
| Cornwall.
| wang_li wrote:
| The Meso-American civilizations routinely engaged in
| human sacrifice. Tens of thousands of people per year
| were murdered. These weren't peaceful monks quietly
| engaging in scholarly pursuits. Even if you don't
| personally drag victims to the top of the pyramid and cut
| their heads off or hearts out, if you stand around and
| watch, you're part of the problem. I'd be interested in
| how you compare the details of what pre and post
| colonization looks like and why you weigh post
| colonization as evil.
| x3al wrote:
| Witch hunts in Europe and, to lesser extent, in colonized
| parts of America weren't that different.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes, that's probably the excuse that got the guy off the
| hook for burning the entire written history of those
| civilizations.
|
| But it was not actually a good excuse. Burning those
| books was still wrong. Even people around him understood
| how wrong it was. We do not have to view colonialism from
| the stratosphere, we can judge the actions individually
| down at the ground.
|
| We know why _he_ wanted to focus on other things than the
| things he was actually personally responsible for, but
| what 's _your_ motive? Got a project of your own to
| defend?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The colonization of the new world was largely an
| immunological accident.
|
| When meeting Europeans, 90% of the Americans would catch
| some European disease and die. This was widely seen as
| the will of god(s) by both sides. Often the disease
| spread faster than the Europeans, so when they got to an
| area most people were already dead.
|
| The following conquest is seen as barbaric and unjust by
| us modern people. But for the people of the time, it was
| just how the world worked. The Aztecs would have been
| overjoyed to conquer Spain the same way.
| vacuity wrote:
| You're right, but I think too that the Europeans happily
| took the deaths as an opportunity and justified it.
| pegasus wrote:
| We truly have no clue, nor could we pretend to infer an
| answer to this. Anyone who pretends otherwise needs to
| get off their high horse.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I suppose it depends on whether or not you view genocide
| and forced religious conversion as evil.
| AngryData wrote:
| Nobody can know, but it is hard to believe it could be
| any worse than it already is, and so most scenarios they
| would probably be better off.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| Glad you asked. Check out the Nobel Prize winning work by
| Acemoglu in his book _Why Nations Fail_. He makes a
| compelling case that the _encomienda_ system put in place
| by the conquistadors impoverished South America at the
| time and continued to impoverish its victims in the
| future as well.
|
| So yes, extremely evil even by the standards of settler
| colonialism.
| alex_smart wrote:
| It is also worth noting that he was absolved of all
| crimes and eventually consecrated as a bishop.
| pqtyw wrote:
| It's complicated in the sense that there were both people
| trying to burn and destroy anything and those trying to
| preserve the books and the language doing their own stuff
| in parallel.
| agentcoops wrote:
| For this reason, one of the most fascinating historical
| relics to me are the Incan Quipu [0]. Not only because their
| logic appears to be 'proto-computational' (at the very least
| a very complex system of encoding numeric and narrative
| information through sequences of knots that were also used
| directly for calculations), but since, neither in the form of
| a valuable material like gold nor obviously a book to be
| destroyed, a large enough number survived to this day. There
| are few traces of the past we know exist that might contain
| everything from astronomical calculations to old social-
| institutional histories.
|
| They're comparable in that sense to the Heculaneum
| manuscripts, which researchers have lately made great
| progress on with deep learning [1]. I hope an equivalent
| initiative someday starts on the Quipu.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu [1]
| https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/herculaneum-papyrus-scrolls/
| pqtyw wrote:
| > narrative information through sequences of knots
|
| It's unlikely any complex narratives could be encoded
| there, though.
|
| Possibly a bit like the e.g. the Mycenaean Linear B script.
| Which is fully decoded and well understood. But despite
| having a full fledged writing system they mainly used it
| for accounting and such. They can tell us about how many
| goats, sheep and various good they had they had but don't
| tell as much about the society or history as such.
|
| Heculaneum manuscripts are kind of the opposite from the
| Quipu in the sense that we have zero issues understanding
| the actual text/symbols just extracting them from the
| destroyed scrolls is rather complicated.
|
| Minoan tablets are maybe a bit closer and little progress
| has been made there (then again we are fully capable of
| reading the script just have no clue about the language it
| was written in).
| agentcoops wrote:
| I agree with your point about the Heculaneum, but my
| understanding is we're far enough with research into the
| form of the Quipus to know that they aren't simply either
| a linear script or merely accounting data.
|
| For a long time, it was thought that they indeed
| contained only the latter, but my certainly non-
| specialist grasp on the matter is that we now know they
| were used to encode much more than that. In addition to
| being used directly to verify calculations [0], they
| contained "histories, laws and ceremonies, and economic
| accounts" or, as the Spanish testified at the time:
| "[W]hatever books can tell of histories and laws and
| ceremonies and accounts of business is all supplied by
| the quipus so accurately that the result is
| astonishing"[1]. My---again crude---understanding is this
| was through embedding categories, names and relational
| data in addition to numbers, signaled not least through
| texture and color [2].
|
| I likely come across as if I'm trying to over-inflate the
| Incan knots, but really it's just to say they appear to
| be a rather fascinating in-between of legal-
| administrative inscriptions, whose discovery transformed
| understanding of Roman institutions over the last century
| or so, and the straight-forward manuscripts of the
| Herculaneum.
|
| [0] My elementary and probably out-of-date recollection:
| an emissary would come to towns with Quipus containing
| work orders, which would be validated with the community
| on the spot.
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27087183
|
| [2] https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article-
| abstract/65..., https://www.jstor.org/stable/483319
| brookst wrote:
| Quipus also make an appearance (alongside core rope
| memory, no less) in Harkaway's excellent _Gnomon_.
| structuredPizza wrote:
| My immediate observation when I first learned of the Quipu
| and its use: nodes and edges.
|
| Potentially a graph to be completed by the owner via verbal
| communication/interpretation as a supplement to the
| material instrument; a single source of information that
| could be interpreted differently depending on the societal
| role and vocation of the owner.
| bboygravity wrote:
| I've been in towns in Mexico where the kids ONLY speak a Mayan
| language. No Spanish or English.
|
| I asked for directions and just got blank stares until someone
| who spoke Spanish in the village explained, lol.
| xandrius wrote:
| Where for example? I'm curious!
| piokoch wrote:
| That is not that simple. They never invented the wheel, the
| Maya calendar cycled over 5128, which is not really convenient,
| numeric system was also rather uncomfortable, strange numerals
| working in 19-base system (but they have invented zero). In
| addition to that they've invented sadistic religion with human
| sacrifices and their culture was very aggressive, what finally
| put Maya civilization to an end, as everyone around happily
| joined European conquerors to get rid of Mayans ASAP.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > In addition to that they've invented sadistic religion with
| human sacrifices and their culture was very aggressive, what
| finally put Maya civilization to an end, as everyone around
| happily joined European conquerors to get rid of Mayans ASAP
|
| That was the Aztec, an entirely different culture from the
| Mayans. The Mayan Kingdoms lasted until 1697.
| AngryData wrote:
| They had the wheel, they just didn't find many practical uses
| for it without having either beasts of burden or nice
| relatively flat paved roads.
|
| Wheels are great if you have something stronger than a human
| to pull it, or you only have to move it a short distance, or
| if you have a hard paved road. But pulling carts or wagons or
| wheelbarrows through rough terrain or muddy roads with just
| human power is absolute trash and not worth the effort, and
| moving things over small short distances alone isn't worth
| the specialized labor and cost of making decent wheel and
| axle systems without machine tools.
|
| If you are still unsure, ask yourself why hikers and campers
| don't pull a cart or push a wheelbarrow everywhere they go
| instead of using a backpack even though they can have ultra
| light aluminum construction with pneumatic tires and ball
| bearing axles. All the effort you would save by using a
| wheelbarrow on smooth parts of your path would be undone by
| just a handful of random sticks or rocks you run into with it
| along the way.
| Throaway195 wrote:
| The Mayans and the Amazon cultures more generally have been
| shown to have created monumental walkways and structures that
| we are only now uncovering form the jungle growth via lidar.
| The idea that they were technologically backwards is far out
| of date.
| uvaursi wrote:
| Whenever I see these backwards-applied math models I think of the
| "wet streets cause rain" expression.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| How does one even come up with 260 day year?
|
| Is the weather in the tropics so similar that year-on-year
| mismatch stops mattering?
| antognini wrote:
| The origins of the 260 day ritual year are not known for
| certain, but there are a couple of hypotheses:
|
| 1. Pregnancy. 260 days is roughly the gestation period of a
| baby, so this may have been the inspiration for tracking this
| duration. (For what it is worth, modern Maya timekeepers cite
| this as being the reason for the length of the 260 day ritual
| calendar.)
|
| 2. In the tropics there are two days of the year when the Sun
| passes through the zenith and objects cast no shadows. In the
| latitude where the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations emerged,
| the length of time between these two days of the year is about
| 260 days.
|
| 3. Numerology. 260 is the product of 20 and 13. 20 was
| significant in Mesoamerican culture because it was the base of
| their numbering system and was associated with the human body
| (given that we have 20 fingers and toes). And the number 13 was
| associated with the cosmos. So the number 260 represented a
| kind of interlocking between the human and the cosmic.
|
| It's also worth noting that the Maya also tracked a 365 solar
| cycle, so they did have a concept of a more standard kind of
| "year." The 365 cycle was used for civil purposes. The 260 day
| ritual cycle was used more for divination.
|
| (Shameless plug, but if you want to learn more about
| Mesoamerican astronomy I have a podcast about the history of
| astronomy and I talked about it on the last episode:
| https://songofurania.com/episode/047)
| behnamoh wrote:
| > And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos.
|
| Any reason number 13, of all numbers, has been so significant
| in different parts of the world, sometimes associated with
| completely opposite meanings (e.g., between Jews and
| Persians/Europeans)?
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| generally, 7 and 13 get a lot of attention because a)they
| are prime b)1/7 and 1/13 have long period when written as
| decimal fraction - so you keep stumbling in your
| calculations every time you encounter them
|
| 1/7 in base 20 takes surprisingly short form of 0.(1h) (h
| is 17), unlike 1/9 or 1/11 - so I wonder if there's Mayan
| prejudice on those instead
| tdeck wrote:
| This reminds me a bit of how the Islamic calendar year is 355
| days and doesn't have intercalation for religious reasons
| (many calendars insert extra months now and then to realign
| with the year, but the Islamic calendar does not). This is
| why Ramadan always seems to be at different times of year
| when you hear about it.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos.
|
| That's the explanation?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| The sad thing is that for all their advanced ways of the time,
| they succumbed to the same thing we are experiencing now... being
| too comfortable to fix what's broken.
|
| The Mayans did not want to give up their lifestyles even in the
| face of crippling population growth and surrounding natural
| resource depletion... which led to their downfall.
| t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote:
| Sounds like the opposite no? Since we are going through
| population collapse in a time of abundance. Does make me wonder
| what the political dynamics were at the time, whether some
| could see problems but weren't in power to change things. Or
| maybe they couldn't understand or figure out solutions to the
| problems. What I'd give to be a multilingual fly on the wall
| throughout history.
| sethammons wrote:
| This should be upvoted. A lot. The downvotes are ill-informed.
|
| https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/77060/mayan-def...
|
| From newish imaging. We can see the impressions of vast jungle
| swaths cut down and way made for planting food and houses. This
| looks to have disrupted the water cycle enough to cause cinotes
| (underground water systems and only source of drinking water)
| to deplete. We see sacrificial remnants below the modern water
| line. Their water disappeared and so did their civilization. By
| the time the Spanish arrived, the local people had no knowledge
| of how to build nor maintain their now ancient cities, the
| jungles regrew, water came back, and sacrificial artifacts were
| covered by replenished water levels.
|
| They are an example of man made effects on local weather
| leading to the downfall of an advanced civilization.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Didn't the Spanish show up briefly, then come back in force
| later?
|
| I've heard some speculate that this introduced European
| diseases, and unlike many Native American tribes, the Mayans
| lived in dense cities. Such disease would spread like
| wildfire.
|
| (Certainly, some disease made it the other way too!
| Tuberculosis and syphilis are examples)
|
| I've heard numbers like 95% died, and it was decades between
| first contact and serious conquest.
|
| That leaves a lot of time for people to grow up with no one
| to teach them trades, or even how to read.
|
| If we lost 95% of our population, so many active skills would
| be lost.
| antognini wrote:
| The collapse of classical Maya civilization predated the
| arrival of the Spanish by around six centuries.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Estimates vary wildly on what percentage of the natives
| died from european diseases. There's just too little
| information on pre-Columbian populations.
|
| For comparison, estimates of the deaths from the Black
| Plague in Europe are 30% to 60%. It's a huge error bar,
| despite having a lot of written records that survived.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| > Didn't the Spanish show up briefly, then come back in
| force later?
|
| The end of the Incan empire is a really striking example of
| this dynamic. The Spanish landed on the South American
| mainland in ~1524, European diseases started spreading, and
| in 1527 the Incan emperor died from one of the diseases
| without an heir. This triggered a really brutal civil war
| of succession that weakened the empire. The Spanish started
| the conquest proper of the Incan empire in ~1532 and were
| successful in part because how weak the empire was after
| the civil war.
|
| So essentially, by arriving early and (inadvertently)
| initiating the disease epidemics, the Spanish put in place
| conditions that made the conquest possible a few years
| later.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| *cenotes
| da02 wrote:
| They used past historical data to make predictions without having
| the need for a helio-centric model?
| cwmoore wrote:
| Is this the answer?
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