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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."

22 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. 300BC called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...they want their pyramid back.

  2. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. The mayan date was right but the work crew by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    The mayan date was right but the work crew fell behind

  4. Re:Fat, squat, and stupid by cusco · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  5. What's the big deal? by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's not like they planned on using it after 2012.

  6. Re:Fat, squat, and stupid by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  7. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  8. Temple in the picture is not Noh mul, it's Laminai by unimacs · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. In other news... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Officials are calling for calm amid reports that feathered serpent attacks are up 39% from historical baselines...

  10. Re:Temple in the picture is not Noh mul, it's Lami by T.E.D. · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here, I found of recent picture of Nohmul for you.

  11. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    religion != ethnicity

  12. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fortunately, thanks to 22nd amendment, he was only able to serve two terms.

  13. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  14. Re:"Mayan" is a noun by wcrowe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not according to Merriam-Webster.

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
  15. Gratuitous link to inaccurate content by zedrdave · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:Private land owner wanted to clear his land by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    Or just accept that land ownership comes with certain restrictions. For example, if I want an addition to my house, I can't just build whatever I want; I need to get permits and ensure that the construction complies with building codes. Saying "no, you cannot knock down this ancient structure which was built millennia ago on what now happens to be your land" strikes me as a reasonable counterpart to that.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  17. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  18. Re:Temple in the picture is not Noh mul, it's Lami by unimacs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  19. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by Dishevel · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow.
    You French people are touchy.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  20. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  21. Re:Temple in the picture is not Noh mul, it's Lami by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  22. Re:Well its not a good time for pyramids by xmundt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/