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Mayan Plumbing Found In Ancient City

Posted by kdawson on from the series-of-tubes dept.

DarkKnightRadick writes "An archaeologist and a hydrologist have published evidence that the ancient Mayans had pressurized plumbing as early as sometime between the year 100 (when the city of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, was first founded) and 800 (when it was abandoned). While the Egyptians had plumbing way earlier (around 2500 BC), this is the first instance of plumbing in the New World prior to European exploration and conquest."

6 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. No big surprise,,, by Overzeetop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the aliens gave pluming to the Egyptians, why not the Mayans?

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  2. Six easy steps to avert collapse of civilization by jamshid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Okay, not really related to ancient Mayan plumbing, but that article did make me think about this great talk by neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman:
    http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/apr/01/six-easy-steps-avert-collapse-civilization/

  3. Pretty Neat by Tremegorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The guy who has the photo credit in the article (Kirk French) was my Archaeology TA during my freshman year. (I'm currently attending PSU for an EE degree). He's a really cool guy, glad to see he's doing well.

    That aside, this is actually a pretty big discovery; very few ancient civilizations actually managed complex engineering achievements like running water. If anything this just adds to the mystery, if they had engineering knowledge of similar level to the Romans, why did their civilization suddenly die out?

    1. Re:Pretty Neat by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've heard the theory suggested that engineering knowledge(and accompanying social and technical organization) is exactly what allows a civilization to suddenly die out.

      Technology(speaking in the broad sense, including things like complex social structures, bureaucracies, and so forth) is extremely powerful; but also makes it fairly easy to get locked-in to brittle trajectories where(even if alternatives are theoretically possible), your only real approach to any problem becomes "do whatever it is we already do; but more, and harder". This often goes poorly. Worse, you have usually managed to build a population that depends on your complex social structures, which makes for a fun die-off if they should come loose.

      When the Roman legions stopped being a net gain, through plunder and Romanization, and started to become a liability(since they couldn't expand the borders any further, and spent most of their time fighting civil wars to install one emperor after another), Roman civilization as a whole never really came up with an alternative. They pretty much just raised more, tried harder, passed a few more laws to try to preserve the status quo. Long-view, they were following a doomed path, proximately, though, they didn't really have a whole lot of options. Any emperor who adopted a "fewer legions" policy would find himself replaced with extreme prejudice by somebody willing to do the opposite.

      I don't know how the Mayans went down; but complexity quite possibly helped them along.

    2. Re:Pretty Neat by esmrg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      why did their civilization suddenly die out?

      Are you actually serious with that question???

      I believe the OP was making the common mistake of personifying the system instead of the people. That is common these days. However, the classic maya vanished before that, around 800 C.E. While the people didn't actually 'vanish', their way of life did. While it is possible that the maya became victims of their own overgrowth like the romans, subject to the law of diminishing returns, it seems more plausible they just abandoned it when it no longer served them. Perhaps the city was more a project or experiment than an exercise in domination and superiority like it was with the romans. The experiment served its purpose and then the people dispersed back into the jungle. It's unfortunate that most of what they learned and recorded during this time was destroyed by those invading peoples you mentioned.

  4. Re:SOLUTION? DEPORT ALL MUSLIMIICS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Get them out before we have to endure more imcompetence. Is it any wonder the middle east is 3rd world? Those towelheads are to stipud to make a bumb even!

    Careful, there. I have posted all sorts of horrible depraved "nigger" jokes, "Jew" jokes, and the like, and not one thing happened. Then I posted a joke about Muslims and Mohammad and *bam*, suddenly my IP address was blocked from Slashdot for several days. Slashdot even has a nice little webpage telling you that you've been blocked. Apparently the PC crowd has a lot of rampant favoritism, especially when one particular group gets its panties in a wad and bitches up a storm about everything a hell of a lot more than the others. Isn't it funny how it's considered cool to bash Christians and Judaeo-Christian beliefs in the media and Christians are expected to be adult enough to accept it and deal with it, but you make one negative remark about Islam and it suddenly doesn't work that way? AND no one sees this as a hypocritical double standard that needs to go?