Mayan site gets double heritage status

catalinacat · Jul 9, 2014

So glad to hear this about Calakmul.. They had better protect the Aztec built floating gardens too in Xochimilco. I was there years ago and you ride a boat around them.

MEXICO CITY (AP) The southern Mexico Mayan ruins of Calakmul have become the country's first site to receive the "mixed" World Heritage designation from the United Nations.

The designation cites both the pyramids of the ancient city-state and hundreds of thousands of acres of well-preserved tropical forest that surrounds them.

But authorities say the heritage designation for another Mexican site, the "floating gardens" of Xochimilco, could be in danger.

The man-made islands created by the Aztecs have been hit by pollution and urban sprawl, endangering the endemic salamanders known as axolotls.

The director of the country's National Institute of Anthropology and History says there is a plan to rescue Xochimilco.

http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-mayan-gets-double-heritage-status-195009849.html

waltky · Aug 19, 2016

Granny had her hat & baggage ready to go when the end o' the world didn't happen...

Mayan Science Still Giving Up Secrets
August 18, 2016 - Who remembers the Mayan Calendar that ended in 2012, and how it was supposed to presage the end of the world? That was funny, Hollywood made a movie about it. Needless to say we're still here. What was arguably lost in all of the sad speculation and fear-mongering of the end-of-the-world crowd was the sheer magnificence and depth of scientific knowledge that allowed the Mayans to create their giant stone calendars.

New research on an old book

The Mayans were an ancient and long-lived civilization that flourished in parts of present-day Central America. Their civilization lasted 2,000 years, but had its cultural heyday between 300 and 900 AD in an era archaeologists call "the Classic Period." They developed a complex mathematical system based on the number 20. They had a symbol for the value of zero, a calendar-based agriculture system, an understanding of architecture, and a written language. But the Mayans were masters of the sky, which they believed had a profound effect on their daily lives. They dutifully recorded all the things they saw in their stellar neighborhood. They predicted eclipses, and used their celestial calendars to manage planting seasons and their daily and religious lives.

The ancient Mayan city of Uxmal.

But while most people are familiar with the giant round calendars, the Mayans also wrote books and filled them with information about their gods, and their lives and the movements of the stars in the sky. One of the most famous books is the Dresden Codex, named for the museum of the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany, where you can see it on display. The codex consists of 39 double-sided pages of information in folded book form written on an ancient form of bark paper. It's a beautiful document, and when completely folded out is almost 3.5 meters long. It consists almost entirely of astronomical information. But new research has just been released on one "chapter" of the codex called the Venus Table, which focuses on the closest planet to Earth and its movements. The new paper was written by UC Santa Barbara's Gerardo Aldana, a professor of anthropology and of Chicana and Chicano studies, and is published in The Journal of Astronomy in Culture.

Why Venus?

The Mayans kept a particularly close eye on Venus because its movement was a marker for a number of their important economic and cultural events. To the Mayans, the role of Venus was similar to the Sun's solstice and equinox, which still mark some of our modern-day rituals. Venus was so important to the Mayans that researchers like archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni from Colgate University has suggested that ancient cities like Uxmal were actually built to give their leaders good views of the morning star. The movement of Venus was used to set the dates of Mayan cultural and economic rituals. That's why the codex devotes so much time to our sister planet. Now this is where things get interesting... and really complicated.

Historians have known for over a century that the Venus table was unique in that it recorded a kind of "leap year" that 'fixed' or mathematically explained Venus' irregular movements across the sky. It's exactly like the 'leap year' in our calendars; and it's necessary because the movements of the earth and the observable planets aren't an exact match for our 24 hour day, and 365 day year. The Venus Table is impressive because, using only their eyes and their understanding of math, the Mayans were able to both predict and record this weirdness in the orbit of Venus. But Aldana says it is important to realize that Mayan astronomers weren't just counting the days it took Venus to cross the sky. He says that's just numerology, like counting down the days until your birthday.

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waltky · Jul 9, 2017

Sambor Prei Kuk given World Heritage status...

Ancient temple site in Cambodia earns UNESCO World Heritage status
Sunday 9th July, 2017 - The U.N. cultural organization added an ancient temple site in Cambodia to its world heritage list, the government said on Sunday, bringing the number of heritage sites in the Southeast Asian country to three.

Sambor Prei Kuk, or 'temple in the richness of the forest' in the Khmer language, located 206 km (128 miles) north of the capital Phnom Penh, is home to numerous temples, ten of which are octagonal. 'Some of these elements, including lintels, pediments and colonnades, are true masterpieces,' UNESCO said on its website. UNESCO said the area had been identified as Ishanapura, the capital of the ancient Chenla Empire, a Khmer civilization that flourished in the late 6th and 7th centuries and preceded the Khmer Empire.

Its remains cover an area of 25 square kilometers. The site has become increasingly popular with foreign tourists. 'The decision of the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is another massive pride for the nation,' the Ministry of Culture of Fine Arts said in a statement on Sunday. Tourist arrivals in Cambodia rose 5 percent to five million last year. About 5.5 million tourists are expected to visit the country this year. Two other sites in Cambodia already have heritage status, including the popular Angkor Wat in Siem Reap province where parts of the 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider' film were shot.

Angkor Wat and Preah Vihear, an 11th century temple on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, were listed as World Heritage Sites in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Sambor Prei Kuk was added to the list on Saturday along with other sites in China and India. Tibetan rights groups criticized UNESCO's decision to extend world heritage status to an extensive plateau area in a heavily Tibetan area, saying it reinforces Chinese control of the region.

http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/...n-cambodia-earns-unesco-world-heritage-status
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See also:

UNESCO Adds to List of World Heritage Sites
July 09, 2017 - A remote Iranian desert city, Ice Age-era caves in Germany and a stone wharf in Brazil built for arriving African slave ships are three new additions to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites.

The World Heritage Committee spent a week meeting in Kraków, Poland, to consider 34 significant historical and cultural sites to add to the list. This year's selections include the Iranian city of Yazd, which UNESCO describes as a "living testimony to the use of limited resources for survival in the desert." The city has managed to avoid so-called modernization that destroyed many similar Iranian towns, and has preserved its traditional homes, bazaars, mosques and synagogues.

Another site UNESCO added to the list is in the Swabian Jura in southern Germany, one of the areas in Europe where humans first arrived more than 40,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. They settled in caves, first discovered in the 1860s, and where they created some of the oldest known figurative art. The U.N. cultural organization said the ancient musical instruments and prehistoric carved figures of animals and humans found in the caves help shed light on the origins of human artistic development.

The ruins of the "Cais do Valongo" or "Valongo wharf," seen in this Nov. 26, 2015 file photo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are now the new addition to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites.

UNESCO also placed the Valongo Wharf in central Rio de Janeiro on the World Heritage List. The stone wharves were built in the early 1800s for slave ships sailing from Africa to Brazil. UNESCO called the wharves "the most important physical trace of the arrival of African slaves on the American continent."

UNESCO added the World Heritage designation to more than 22 sites during its weeklong meeting in Poland, including choices that were controversial. They include the Hoh Xil area in the China's Qinghai province, a traditionally Tibetan area. By designating this a World Heritage site, the International Camnpaign for Tibet, an advocacy group critical of China's administration there, said UNESCO endorses the forced relocation of Tibetan nomads by Chinese authorities.

China has promised to preserve the traditions and cultural heritage of the Tibetan region. UNESCO also designated the Old City and Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron as a Palestinian World Heritage Site, angering Israel. The city is split between Israeli and Palestinian control with the Old City and tomb in the Israeli sector. The tomb is sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Israel accuses UNESCO of trying to hide Jewish ties to Hebron, while Palestinians contend Israel is seeking to undermine their history.

https://www.voanews.com/a/unesco-adds-to-list-of-world-heritage-sites/3934979.html
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waltky · Jan 19, 2018

Mayan treasures discovered in underwater cave...

Explorers in Mexico Discover World's Largest Underwater Cave and It's Filled With Ancient Mayan Treasures
1/18/18 - Divers in Mexico have discovered the largest known underwater, flooded cave in the world. The discovery could reveal more about the pre-Hispanic, ancient community that existed in the region. The Yucatan Peninsula, where the cave is located, still holds treasures from the ancient Mayan community.

The cave is made of two massive underwater caverns that are connected. The cave stretches across 216 miles, according to the Gran Acuífero Maya (GAM), the team of explorers who discovered the cave. The cave was discovered near the beach resort of Tulum, reported Reuters. The two caves, Sac Actun and Dos Ojos, measured at 163 miles and 52 miles, respectively. Until the discovery of the connection between the two caves, the largest underwater cave in the world was the Ox Bel Ha, which stretched 168 miles long, according to the National Speleological Society. But now, the Sac Actun cave system is the largest known underwater cave on Earth.

Tourists enjoy the beach in Tulum National Park, Quintana Roo state, Mexico

The discovery "allows us to appreciate much more clearly how the rituals, the pilgrimage sites and ultimately the great pre-Hispanic settlements that we know emerged," Guillermo de Anda, director of the GAM, told Reuters. He called it an "amazing" find that would help us to better understand the Maya civilization. The discovery is the result of decades of work touring hundreds of miles of underwater caves in the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, according to the exploration director, Robert Schmittner. Schmittner has been exploring the Sac Actun cave for 14 years. "Now," Schmittner said in a statement, "everyone's job is to conserve it."

Tourists enjoy the water inside a cenote in Tulum National Park, Quintana Roo state, Mexico, on March 23, 2017. Tulum was a walled city of Mayan culture southeast of Mexico, on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. It is currently a major tourist attraction of the Riviera Maya and next to it is the modern population of the same name, Tulum.

Finding a cave such as this one would have required "painstaking exploration," according to Thomas Iliffe, marine biologist who studies marine life in underwater caves from the University of Texas A&M at Galveston. The complex tunnels branch off in different directions, there are lower and upper level passages and getting lost can be fatal. “These are really maze-like systems,” Iliffe, who was not involved with this discovery, told Newsweek. To avoid getting lost, explorers create maps of the underwater passages. The divers often compare the maps of different caves by overlaying them in an attempt find locations where connections between caves might exist, according to Iliffe. They focus on exploring those areas to find passages where caves connect.

The underwater caves are often linked to sinkholes or underground natural wells, which are known as cenotes. The Sac Actun cave system is, in part, a massive network of cenotes that are essentially flooded sinkholes—hence why the caves are called flooded caves. The spectacular network of the cenotes throughout the Yucatan Peninsula has monumental relics from the ancient civilization, according to Reuters. In 2014, human bones were discovered in a cenote, where archaeologists suspect the ancient dead were buried, reported National Geographic at the time. Other human remains discoveries have had evidence of being sacrificed in the cenotes. Artifacts including water pitchers, jade beads, shells and stone tools have also been discovered in the depths of the underwater sites.

The largest underwater cave in the world was discovered in Mexico by explorers from the Gran Acuífero Maya.

Explorers from GAM hope to find a connection between another 11-mile cenote system and the Sac Actun—which would make the largest underwater cave's size slightly bigger. The 11-mile cenote system has been dubbed "the mother of all cenotes," located north of the Sac Actun cave. That system of cenotes hasn't been connected to the Sac Actun, but according to GAM, explorers are close to discovering the connection between these two systems as well. "This immense cave represents the most important submerged archaeological site in the world," de Anda said in a statement. This cave system has "documented evidence of the first settlers of America, as well as extinct fauna and, of course, the Mayan culture."

http://www.newsweek.com/explorers-m...largest-underwater-cave-and-its-filled-783905
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catalinacat · Jan 19, 2018

waltky said: ↑

Mayan treasures discovered in underwater cave...

Explorers in Mexico Discover World's Largest Underwater Cave and It's Filled With Ancient Mayan Treasures
1/18/18 - Divers in Mexico have discovered the largest known underwater, flooded cave in the world. The discovery could reveal more about the pre-Hispanic, ancient community that existed in the region. The Yucatan Peninsula, where the cave is located, still holds treasures from the ancient Mayan community.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information Waltky. That is fasinating, I want to dive in that cave. We need to get tickets and fly there as soon as possible!

waltky · Jan 19, 2018

catalinacat said: ↑

Thanks for the information Waltky. That is fasinating, I want to dive in that cave. We need to get tickets and fly there as soon as possible!
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Uncle Ferd wonderin'...

... if ya got room...

... fer him to tag along?

waltky · Feb 2, 2018

Lasers find lost Mayan cities...

Sprawling Maya network discovered under Guatemala jungle
2 February 2018 - Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Maya ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough.

Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications. The landscape, near already-known Maya cities, is thought to have been home to millions more people than other research had previously suggested. The researchers mapped over 810 square miles (2,100 sq km) in northern Peten. Archaeologists believe the cutting-edge technology will change the way the world will see the Maya civilisation. "I think this is one of the greatest advances in over 150 years of Maya archaeology," said Stephen Houston, Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Brown University.

The Maya city of Tikal was found to be just a fraction of an immense hidden metropolis

Mr Houston told the BBC that after decades of work in the archaeological field, he found the magnitude of the recent survey "breathtaking". He added, "I know it sounds hyperbolic but when I saw the [Lidar] imagery, it did bring tears to my eyes." Results from the research using Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilisation more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China. "Everything is turned on its head," Ithaca College archaeologist Thomas Garrison told the BBC. He believes the scale and population density has been "grossly underestimated and could in fact be three or four times greater than previously thought".

How does Lidar work?

Described as "magic" by some archaeologists, Lidar unveils archaeological finds almost invisible to the naked eye, especially in the tropics.

* It is a sophisticated remote sensing technology that uses laser light to densely sample the surface of the earth
* Millions of laser pulses every four seconds are beamed at the ground from a plane or helicopter
* The wavelengths are measured as they bounce back, which is not unlike how bats use sonar to hunt
* The highly accurate measurements are then used to produce a detailed three-dimensional image of the ground surface topography

Revolutionary treasure map
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Mayan site gets double heritage status

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