Teenager Discovers Mayan City While He Remains in Quebec

[derspiess]

[Valmy]

... and apparently it was a hoax story. Oh well 

What a random thing to hoax about.

'New Phoenician City discovered by precocious Mongolian kid'

'Ok that's pretty neat.'

'HAHA just kidding.'

'Or not...whatever.'

[Caliga]

It was a hoax in the sense that the entire story is a fabrication, or a hoax in the sense that the kid made up a story and bullshitted to the media?

[Oexmelin]

If it is a hoax, it is going to be because of trafficking with the pictures, but his project is indeed listed on past Quebec Science fairs websites, and there are independent interviews with the guy from the Canadian Space Agency in charge of data analysis. Some experts are skeptical.

[Jacob]

If it is a hoax, it is going to be because of trafficking with the pictures, but his project is indeed listed on past Quebec Science fairs websites, and there are independent interviews with the guy from the Canadian Space Agency in charge of data analysis. Some experts are skeptical.

What I read (and I'll dig up the link) that the kid indeed developed the theory, and located the site... but that the site is not a Mayan site but basically an old field, and that various science reporters have run with the kid's theory as if it was real. So not a hoax by the kid - he gets kudos for his research and interest, and for an interesting hypothesis - but that people have simple run with the ball too far because it'd be a neat if it was true.

[Oexmelin]

What I read (and I'll dig up the link) that the kid indeed developed the theory, and located the site... but that the site is not a Mayan site but basically an old field, and that various science reporters have run with the kid's theory as if it was real.

Yes, that is what I have read from skeptical experts. The initial Journal de Montréal article did mention - as the kid himself mentioned -  that the theory needed to be confirmed by having people on ground reach the site, but it was buried in the over enthusiastic tone.

[Jacob]

What I read (and I'll dig up the link) that the kid indeed developed the theory, and located the site... but that the site is not a Mayan site but basically an old field, and that various science reporters have run with the kid's theory as if it was real.

Yes, that is what I have read from skeptical experts. The initial Journal de Montréal article did mention - as the kid himself mentioned -  that the theory needed to be confirmed by having people on ground reach the site, but it was buried in the over enthusiastic tone.

Yeah, no aspersions on the young man at all.

Anyhow, what I've seen is one of the experts saying that - but only on his FB feed here: https://www.facebook.com/david.stuart.520?fref=nf&pnref=story

[Malthus]

The kid's theory is neat, but implies a degree of central planning (and deliberate disregard of geography) that would have been literally impossible for the ancient Maya.

The Mayans were organized around warring alliances of city-states; the Mayan cities were built over hundreds of years, often in response to local economic and strategic factors. We know a lot about this because of recent advances in decoding Mayan writing. There is simply no way that they could have deliberately 'placed' cities to correspond with constellations, even if they wanted to - they were not a unified kingdom with central city planning, but a culture-area which more resembles warring-states China or ancient Greece. 

[Razgovory]

I'm curious how the kid would have gotten access to Mayan maps.

[Valmy]

I'm curious how the kid would have gotten access to Mayan maps.

Surely that would all be publicly available to any motivated enthusiast. It is not like Mayan studies are a state secret.

[viper37]

The kid's theory is neat, but implies a degree of central planning (and deliberate disregard of geography) that would have been literally impossible for the ancient Maya.

There does not need to be any central planning.  All you need are people watching the stars and building their temples according to stars&constallations, around which the cities organize themselves.  I don't see anything scifi-ish here, just people of a common culture, language and religion looking up at the stars to build their temple.
It ain't unique to Mayas either, lots of civilizations seems to have built important buildings in relation to

What I wonder though:
- The kid poses a theory in regard to constellations and city building
- That theory is validated by the CSA et the Japanese space agency, meaning there are cities where he claims there are and they match constellations
- The kid did present his theory to Mexican archeologist (no names given in the article) who did not totally rebuke it, in fact, the details are sketchy, but they hint at the possibility that they are trying to organize an expedition, 40km from the nearest city, to verify the claims.  A second article talks of air survey to scout the location and the path, before attempting anything else.
- The original article on-line does not give any Google Earth map of the site, only a general geographic location, which located the city square in Belize, but as now since shifted back to Mexico in the on-line articles.
- The coordinates given in the original article 17N 90W does not appear to match the description that Calakmul is the nearest city, 40km
away in the jungle.  In fact, 17N 90W is in Guatemala.  The previous map located the city in Belize while they talk of Mexico.
- The paper claims to have had access to the satellite images, which they double-check with telemetry specialists and they talk of 30 structures, not just one pyramid.  I have not seen these images, except in the BBC article.

Deriving any conclusions one way or another seems premature at this point, especially if one does not have the correct coordinates.
It's not like newspaper have a good track record in reporting scientific news.

Original article (French)
Follow up (French)

[Malthus]

The kid's theory is neat, but implies a degree of central planning (and deliberate disregard of geography) that would have been literally impossible for the ancient Maya.

There does not need to be any central planning.  All you need are people watching the stars and building their temples square in the city center, around which the cities organize themselves.  I don't see anything scifi-ish here, just people of a common culture, language and religion looking up at the stars.

That isn't how cities are built, though (particularly Mayan cities). They usually grow organically from small villages located in useful places for agriculture, trade, or defense, or located close to useful water sources, and only when they get large enough and wealthy enough because of successes in these areas, develop massive temple architecture.

Here's an actual scholarly description:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00045600902931785?journalCode=raag20

The ancient Maya occupied tropical lowland Mesoamerica and farmed successfully to support an elaborate settlement pattern that developed over many centuries. There has been debate as to the foundation of the settlement patterns. We show that Maya settlement locations were strongly influenced by environmental factors, primarily topographic slope, soil fertility, and soil drainage properties. Maps of these characteristics were created at the local scale and combined using Bayesian weights-of-evidence methods to develop probabilistic maps of settlement distributions based on the known, but incomplete, distribution of Maya archaeological sites, both domestic and monumental. The predictive model was validated with independently collected point-sampled field data for both presence and absence, predicting 82 percent of undiscovered Maya sites and 94 percent of site absence. This information should be of use in conservation planning for the region, which is under threat from contemporary agricultural expansion.

How can ancient Mayan settlement patterns correspond both with (I) an elaborate development over many centuries based on local environmental factors, and (II) a mapping of important cosmological correspondences? 

The answer, of course, is that it can't. Which is more likely - that the Maya (despite not having a common government) spontaneously decided to place cities where they "should" be in accordance with some grand cosmic scheme, regardless of the worth of the site for agriculture, trade or defense, or that cities grew where these factors favored them? 

There are exceptions of course, like Amarna in Egypt - a city built out of nothing for ideological reasons - but they happen in the context of kingdoms capable of planning on a massive scale. Also, the place of course didn't last longer than the king who built it. 

In short, a bunch of city-states are most unlikely to be organized in location in accordance with some grand overall design, particularly where such a design of necessity would go against environmental and strategic factors.

[Malthus]

Seeing correspondences to constellations is more likely an example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

[Valmy]

On the other hand the Mayans did build temples and other structures based on astronomical observations. It is not totally out the realm of possibility.

[viper37]

The answer, of course, is that it can't. Which is more likely - that the Maya (despite not having a common government) spontaneously decided to place cities where they "should" be in accordance with some grand cosmic scheme, regardless of the worth of the site for agriculture, trade or defense, or that cities grew where these factors favored them? 

the last part does not have to be a truth.  You could pick the location of a city or temple because it fits with all the factors you need + a constellation important to you, and then have the city develop around you.  Or, simply, raze a few building in the center of the city and rebuild a temple there.  I don't think ancient cities were static, in the sense that nothing ever got demolished and rebuilt.  Could be wrong of course.

I'm not convinced he's on to something definite, but I think it will warrent some air expeditions to verify the claims, or ideally, more precise satellite imagery, if it can be done. 

There is a perfect correlations with other existing cities and mayan constellations, apparantly, so there is something there.  It's not just that one place, which could be explained by pareidolia.

Fertile land would have been abundant in the place, before the mayans abandonned their sites and the jungle grew on it.  Having fertile land for culture where you build a city and have a village grow into a city because it becomes a center of worship is not impossible.

I suspect the Mayas had a little more than 118 cities, villages and settlements at the heigt of their civilization.

It could also be that a city was first built some km away from the newly discovered potential site and later on a temple, with some smaller buildings was built there.  If, as one of the later articles points out,  Calakmul is very nearby (40km) and it's a site discovered in the 1930s, it could be part of a bigger complex, or some structures built a little further away.

It could also be explained by something else, totally mundane.  But given the correlation to the constellations, there is something that warrants more study.

I'm guessing archeologists specialized in mayan civilizations have more date, which they can correllate with this new information and see if it still holds up.