These two pictures come from the NY Times today telling of exciting new finds from Guatemala. Opinions of the Maya Preclassic Period are being revised based on this new information which is showing that people of this era were much more developed and sophisticated than thought. The origins of Maya glyph writing are being pushed back in time. A column of 10 glyphs painted on a whitewashed wall has been dated to between 300 and 200 BC. So far they are untranslatable. Interesting stuff.
11 comments:
Am I crazy or do those figures have a kind of Chinese dynasty vibe to them? Even the mask below could be a dragon image. I am not suggesting some lost cultural linkage... :-)
Unless there is one, and then of course: Isn't it obvious?
No, you're not alone. Lots of people have pointed out the stylistic similarities between some Maya and Chinese art. Not sure what it means.
Can ONLY mean that ancient Chinese sailors were the first to make contact with pre-Columbian natives. They used Yeti as porters, some of which escaped and migrated north to fill the "Bigfoot niche" left empty by Gigantopithecus, all of whom were eaten by the Mayans' first ancestors in the New World.
This is all pretty well established in fact now.
Careful Matt-- somebody will believe you! As George Leonard Herter used to say, "It's a well- known fact..."
Matt, have you read any of Ken MacLeod's science fiction? He has a series where aliens have periodically come to Earth over millions of years and transplanted populations of animals to a series of planets on the other side of the galaxy. So you have Gigantopithecus, Australopithecines, and H. sapiens living side by side with dinosaurs. In fact the little gray space aliens we know are the evolved descendents of small dinosaurs who didn't have their evolutionary trajectory disrupted by a giant meteor strike. Fits well with your model.
Also interesting similarity, the Chinese and many Native Americans, look at what we call "The Man in the Moon" and don't see a face. They think it looks like a rabbit. Try it the next time you look at the moon.
I second Reid's recommendation of Ken MacLeod. Start with Cosmonaut Keep.
I was a big David Brin fan for years. He wrote a series of stories on the premise that intelligent species of the universe were "sponsored" (and sometimes modified) from semi-sapient forms discovered on the habitable planets. A complex society of client species and their sponsors was the galactic norm, until us: Rumor had it that humans evolved our smarts on our own---"bootstrapping," they called it. Always made me proud. :-)
Which would you recommend? Moro-- did you once recommend these as well, or was it someone else?
Some Brin titles here, Steve.
"Sundiver," "Startide Rising" and "The Uplift War" are the ones I remember with this theme, although there are probably others. I read them in that order, which may be chronological but it has ben a while. All were enjoyable, although The Uplift War was the one I remember best---by "then" we had brought up chimps and gorillas as ourown client species, and the chimps (being chimps) still enjoyed drinking, slumming and eating their (and our) alien enemies, which they described as "tasking just like chicken!"
Great stuff.
Or maybe it was "tasting" just like chicken. :-) As I said, it has ben (been) a while.
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