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Mayan Pyramid In Belize Leveled By Construction Crew
An anonymous reader writes "If an imposing 2300-year old Mayan temple situated at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was on your list of things to see before you die, you're too late. The monument was essentially destroyed by a construction crew in order to provide gravel for road construction. Archaeologists expressed shock, as Nohmul (the "great mound") was a major Mayan religious center in its day. While the pyramid was situated on private property, such historical sites are supposedly protected by ordinance, and officials may file criminal charges."
In with the new.
Humanity needs to stop hording and learn to let things go.
...they want their pyramid back.
Your comment would likely get more credibility without the ethnic slur. Also that is a BS article as it was one nutcase that suggested it, not their government or anyone in power.
If we judged folks that way all slashdotters would be considered ill informed racists based on your comment alone.
The mayan date was right but the work crew fell behind
You stupid fuck, when the British wanted to build a railroad in Bolivia and there weren't any handy gravel deposits nearby they smashed up big chunks of Tiahuanacu. You can still see pieces of statues in the foundations for the railroad bridges in the area. Greed and laziness will win out over respect for the past pretty much every time that money is involved.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It's not like they planned on using it after 2012.
Those mestizo half-breeds really weren't born with a full box of marbles--destroying a temple for road gravel. And Obama wants to flood our country with these tawny height challenged brainiacs.
So since these half-breeds are inferiour to their ancestors who built the great temple in the first place, presumably it was the influx of Western European genes that lead to this inferiority?
Just "one nutcase"? Somehow that "one nutcase" has quite some clout in Timbuktu and Bamiyan.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Just make it cheaper, no matter how.... if somebody find a way to make good business nuking the moon, they will go ahead....romantic people can still watch Breakfast at Tiffany's... Tides? Who needs tides? Fishes? who cares? I will have my new Ferrari to drive, a longer yatch and a luxurious flat in Aspen....
Too late, I have pictures of the Sphinx being destroyed ...
visit www.goatse.cx to see
I think you are mixing up sphinx and sphincter.
I was just in Belize a few weeks ago and while the destruction of any Mayan ruins is tragic, I don't think Nohmul was quite what it's being made out to be. The few pictures I could find of the actual Nohmul temple are much different than the picture in the linked article. I remember no mention of it when trying to select ruins to go see. It doesn't seem like it was a big tourist draw.
I was at Laminai and that is a truly impressive set of structures. There are lots of unexcavated buildings still there and the remarkable thing is that the look just like hills. Though it's a stretch, it's not outside the realm of possibility that workers at Noh mul were unaware of the significance of what looked like a pile of rocks until they started working. The landowner surely would have known.
Officials are calling for calm amid reports that feathered serpent attacks are up 39% from historical baselines...
In the article he listed. In those cases many folks had to be nutcases and some of them in power.
It does not change the fact that the Egyptian government is not going to destroy their largest tourist draw, which gets them income they badly need.
Here, I found of recent picture of Nohmul for you.
Okay, the pyramid was on privately owned land. Time to check and see what the land owner wanted to do with the land that the pyramid was getting in the way of. Or, perhaps he was just concerned that all these tourists were coming to this pyramid and he wasn't getting anything out of it. And the insurance liability, Suppose someone were climbing around on this thing and fell, even if they were illegal trespassers would he be responsible? There are a number of very good legal reasons why he's want to have this hazard removed. On top of that, I understand the price of gravel is very high these days.
As much as I hate the idea of expropriating land from private owners, if you want to really preserve these sorts of things you've got to remove them from private ownership and recompense the land owner either with money or a swap of some new land of equal value. As long as these sorts of things are in private ownership, this will continue.
religion != ethnicity
Let me bring you up to speed; whatever the problem, it's the fault of the USA.
This is nothing new. Just look throughout the Middle East and Europe and you'll find all kinds of plundered and recycled architecture. Mostly because it's easier to have your stone masons rework something to fit rather than carve something from scratch.
The Great Mosque of Kairouan is a good example where it used to be punishable by death to count the columns. The real reason is they didn't want people looking at them too closely because they were mostly stolen from places like Carthage and are a mix of Greek, Roman, and Christian designs.
The major cities of the Indus Valley civilization were dismantled for railroad ballast for the same reasons.
Grammatically correct racism is so en vogue.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"Mayan" is the name of the language. The adjective is "Maya," as in Maya temple or Maya people.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Fortunately, thanks to 22nd amendment, he was only able to serve two terms.
Muzzies
http://www.early-advantage.com/
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The destruction was intentional by some authorities still looking for McAfee. Now they'll charge him with the human sacrifices that occurred two millenia ago.
This kind of destruction for the pettiest of reasons isn't anything new. In Malta, a group took a bulldozer to the stone temples at Mnajdra, a glorious megalithic site, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Mnajdra is breathtakingly lovely and enigmatic and fascinating. Fortunately, it's largely been restored and is again open to the public. Why? People had constructed illegal bird-hunting hides on the adjacent land and objected to their hides being destroyed. People will be vicious destructive assholes for any number of reasons, including just because they can. Profit, sheer revelry in destruction (Persepolis), symbolism of dominance or victory (Summer Palace in Beijing), religious fanaticism (Buddha statues), a fanatical dislike of cities (Mongols and most of the cities in their way), to discourage attacks (Carthage), any number of reasons.
Does that mean the AC is learned?
Religion is not an ethnicity. And religious fanatics deserve no consideration of respect.
So tell me again, why is the first link for that story a bulshitty post on a New Zealand rightwing blog, with a blatantly misidentified picture? (this is what the actual temple looks like)
For chrissake, the blog post starts with "Reports are coming in", as if it was written by some international news channel, not some guy in his underwear sitting on the opposite side of the world.
And to all coders out there, language != country.
I'm tired of selecting "French" and having my country code set to "France" and my keyboard set to fucking "AZERTY".
Napoleon's troops in Egypt were using the Sphinx for target practice. But it is not always racist. Chinese have been quarrying their great wall for bricks for ages. Many Italian homes were built using recycled bricks from the aqueducts. Stone tablets inscribed with royal decrees being used as washing stones...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I prefer that he does use the ethnic slur -- as well as the personal attacks, foul language, anger, and hate -- that way we immediately know his age (teenager), and therefore his credibility (zero). This makes slashdot more efficient for those of us who come here for knowledge.
In other words, if he was polite and courteous, I would need to spend more time and effort on evaluating his position. The anger and hate reduces my workload.
Yup - here in Oslo, an abandoned monastery (and many other old buildings) got picked to pieces for the stone - it was easier to go there and pick the materials you needed, than to quary new materials. There are probably tons of similar examples in every old city.
Indeed - didn't the Egyptian pyramids used to be smooth (ish) on the outside. The locals removed the outside shells, leaving the stepped shapes they are now.
Visual impressiveness is rarely an indication of archaeological importance. In fact, something that looks like a pile of rocks is often a structure that hasn't been studied yet. The fantastic pyramids and temples you see are often the result of best-guess reconstruction.
I agree. My point was that in the few pictures I was able to find of it prior to being destroyed, it didn't look like much more than what could have been a natural limestone formation covered by vegetation. Again I think it's a stretch, but it's possible the workers didn't realize they were digging up a temple. After reading some of the local news coverage though, this seems very unlikely.
Anyway, I'm disappointed that the article pictured the wrong temple and I suspect that it might have been intentional.
Wow.
You French people are touchy.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
ill informed racists
As opposed to the well-informed, who think Islam is a race?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Are you even sure it was a bad idea? They managed to take an small extremist group on the verge of collapse due to disinterest and lack of funding and give it an enemy that built it into a large and thriving terrorist network inspirational enough that mimics across the region adopted their name. If Osama actually cared a whit about the US that was probably another success - he managed, with the help of our totally disproportionate and chaotic response of course, to turn us from one of the most-loved nations in the world into a nation broadly considered to be one of the single greatest threats to global security. He may have underestimated just how useful his attack and the promise of perpetual war was going to be to certain tyrannical interests in the US government, and got himself killed due to our dogged persistence, but still, very nearly an unqualified success.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Most of the posts in response to this story seem to focus on
* Bad Grammar
* Bad Jokes
* US Politics (how the fuck everything can be related to US politics is beyond me)
* Ethnic Slurs (including of course the obligatory insults to Muslims that must appear in any article on anything these days. Keep up the hate guys, its only helping your reputation with the rest of the world).
* Lastly, and apparently leastly, some outrage at the destruction of a part of human history, thus lessening our understanding of the same by some degree. A site like this belongs to all of humanity, its our heritage, its a way to understand where we came from and thus perhaps where we might be going. The people who knocked this temple down (and the owner of the company responsible) should be in prison for the rest of their lives.
Hopefully this at least serves to make governments all through the region aware of the need to protect heritage sites like this. Without our history, we are *nothing*.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I'm not sure, how many "hideous acts" does your group have to commit to turn you into the enemy of civilzation?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Now is a great time to go. The tourist areas are about as safe before, and nothing much has changed for visitors... except that things are less crowded and cheaper, what with so many scared tourists staying away. Stick to the main tourist centers and don't wander off alone at night, and you'll be a-ok.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
BWAHAHAHAH BRAVO! Wish I had mod points.
Stone tablets inscribed with royal decrees being used as washing stones...
If they're anything like typical modern laws then they've finally been recycled to be useful.
Anyway, I'm disappointed that the article pictured the wrong temple and I suspect that it might have been intentional.
Agreed. Also buried in the article: the site has been very thoroughly worked over by archeologists over the decades, and there are archeologists who see this as an opportunity to study the lower layers that would have been impossible before.
So is this bad? I'd certainly say so. But in reality, a degraded monument not in current use was destroyed. The biggest shame in my mind is that the archeologists weren't given the opportunity to disassemble it. I certainly hope future civilizations don't spend too much time arguing over the ruins of the corner church on my street.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
He didn't claim they were responsible. The words "GOP mecca" means something like "GOP dream world". As in what the GOP would like to turn the USA into (even more than the US already is) - a place where the people with money can buy their way into getting anything they want.
Yea, OK, so why single out the GOP?
If you stop paying attention to the lip-service and instead note only their actions, there is very, very little difference between Democrats and Republicans.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Some Catholics have done some truly horrible things , and their leaders actively worked to suppress that information and prevent criminal charges from being filed therefore the Catholic Church is a vast criminal conspiracy.
FTFY. This is of course ignoring indulgences, the crusades, religious persecution, etc.
Bullshit. They excavated the material for road fill, they knew exactly what it was and the quality of the material they would obtain and how much money they would save paying for quarried material trucked to the site. You do not just use any passing dirt for road fill because it will be impossible to compact properly and could be subject to extreme bulking when exposed to water, you do not randomly excavate hills because you do not know what they constitute and how difficult they will be to excavate.
You win the prize for civil construction ignorance as do those who thought your ignorance was informative. Even ancient Romans knew better than you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads please check diagram at bottom of article.
The greedy shit head owner of the company knew exactly what they were doing and how much they would save.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Greetings and Salutations;
I feel as if I am feeding the trolls here, although this is such a fantasy trip that it almost is insulting to trolls to compare it to them. Your re-writing of history is neither accurate nor anywhere near the facts. The fact of the matter is that the previous administration (a REPUBLICAN one) truly scared the world because it was so random and irrational. After all, Dubya, in response to a terrorist attack used bad data to justify an 11 year war on a country that did not have a bloody thing to do with 9/11. However, there was one telling conference where he spoke the truth about his motivations for going into Iraq. In the conference, when pressed on why Iraq and Saddam were a target he said "...he tried to kill my daddy...".
America's image in the world has taken many hits in the past few decades, thanks to the two-faced dealings we have had with many countries, and, the brutal dictatorships we have supported. When Pres. Obama was elected, there was dancing in the streets in other countries because they thought, finally, a very intelligent, rational person was at the controls, and, the actions that caused America to lose face would change. They, did not realize that America is a huge ship, and, it takes a lot of time an ocean to turn it around. They also did not realize how much the Republicans hated Pres. Obama, and, how they would do anything they could to force him to fail. These, and other factors, have caused his presidency to be far less effective than it could have been.
So...do not fool yourself. America has not been the "most loved" country in the world for a long time. We might still have a chance to get there, but, it will take time, and a change in attitudes of the representatives in the Federal government away from competition and towards actually doing things that are good for the country as a whole.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
This has happened countless times over history, this is far from unique. There is little evidence to think it will stop, unless it is more valuable as ruins.
Hadrian's Wall is a perfect example. "Hey free building stone sweet!" In this case it was used for roads, rather than dwellings. Old castles are subject to this as well. Heck the Vatican has destroyed a huge part of history, recycling ruins, particularly for valuable easily accessible marble, bronze, and just about anything from roman ruins. I am sure they felt that not only can they get great materials on the cheap, but also the destruction of heathen, pagan, temples is just a bonus!
Ironically I think there should be a special place in hell for those that intentionally destroy historical artifacts that that.
The idea that "Sambo" is a slur shows the stupidity of those who think the word derogatory.
"Little Black Sambo" is a fantasy about a black boy who outsmarts a tiger. If you think the story is bad, you must disagree with the notion that blacks are smarter than tigers.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Lamanai, not Laminai,, from the Mayan Lama'anayin meaning submerged crocodile.
Beautiful pyramids though and it is very easy to know what they are is as they are always in areas with other Mayan structures.
And yes, the Belize gov is pretty incompetent (ask McAffee)