one wonders how much valuable information was lost when the european conquerors destroyed every bit of writing in the new world they could get their hands on.

Sounds like the Muslim conquerers of Alexandria, who decided that the ancient Greek scrolls didn't add anything to what was in the Koran, so were disposable.

From wikipedia:

without the distraction of TV, cellphones, and all the other clutter of modern day life.

It was a system that was handed down through the generations. They wrote down planetary transits millennia before they happened.

Just image where/how the world would be now if the christians hadn't invaded 1,800 years ago:

Greeks had coin operated machines and machined computation devices; Romans had running water and toilets in homes with their aqueduct system that has never been rivaled to this day; Mayans performed successful brain surgery. We still cannot build a pyramid.

And one can only imagine what was burned in the Alexandrian Library. They were the google of their age - countries complained that priest/esses pretty much stole (plundered) original scrolls from them to put into the Library, instead of copying them, as they were supposed to do.

It just irks the hell out of me how archaeologists are "astounded" at what they find but they never really study the available writings about the era they are digging through. A lot of ancient history is dismissed as "mythology" but why would historians of their day write of myth, when they were writing what they saw in their day.

When you think on 10,000 years (or more) of direct knowledge, it doesn't make us quite the special snowflakes that we think we are.

Hidden codex may reveal secrets of life in Mexico before Spanish conquest

Hi-tech imaging has revealed exceptionally rare manuscript overlaid by 16th-century deerhide document held at Oxford University

Maev Kennedy
Sunday 21 August 2016 13.11 EDT

One of the rarest manuscripts in the world has been revealed hidden beneath the pages of an equally rare but later Mexican codex, thanks to hi-tech imaging techniques.

The Codex Selden, a book of concertina-folded pages made out of a five-metre strip of deerhide, is one of a handful of illustrated books of history and mythology that survived wholesale destruction by Spanish conquerors and missionaries in the 16th century.

Researchers using hyperspectral imaging, a technique originally used for geological research and astrophysics, discovered the underlying images hidden beneath a layer of gesso, a plaster made from ground gypsum and chalk, without damaging the priceless later manuscript.

The underlying images must be older than the codex on top, which is believed to have been made about 1560 and was donated to Oxford’s Bodleian library in the 17th century by the scholar and collector John Selden.

The codex is one of fewer than 20 dating from before or just after the colonisation, which were saved by scholars who realised the importance of the strip cartoon-like images, a complex system that used symbols, stylised human figures and colours to recount centuries of history and beliefs, including religious practice, wars, the founding of cities and the genealogy of noble families.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/21/hidden-codex-reveals-secrets-of-life-in-mexico-before-spanish-conquest

Mayans Made Major Discovery in Math, Astronomy
Wed Aug 17, 2016 1:0



TEHRAN (FNA)- Ancient hieroglyphic texts reveal Mayans made major discovery in math and astronomy, a researcher suggests.



This study blends the study of Mayan hieroglyphics (epigraphy), archaeology and astronomy to present a new interpretation of the Venus Table, which tracks the observable phases of the second planet from the Sun.

For more than 120 years the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex -- an ancient Mayan book containing astronomical data -- has been of great interest to scholars around the world. The accuracy of its observations, especially the calculation of a kind of 'leap year' in the Mayan Calendar, was deemed an impressive curiosity used primarily for astrology.

But UC Santa Barbara's Gerardo Aldana, a professor of anthropology and of Chicana and Chicano studies, believes the Venus Table has been misunderstood and vastly underappreciated. In a new journal article, Aldana makes the case that the Venus Table represents a remarkable innovation in mathematics and astronomy -- and a distinctly Mayan accomplishment. "That's why I'm calling it 'discovering discovery,' " he explained, "because it's not just their discovery, it's all the blinders that we have, that we've constructed and put in place that prevent us from seeing that this was their own actual scientific discovery made by Mayan people at a Mayan city."

Multitasking science

Aldana's paper, "Discovering Discovery: Chich'en Itza, the Dresden Codex Venus Table and 10th Century Mayan Astronomical Innovation," in the Journal of Astronomy in Culture, blends the study of Mayan hieroglyphics (epigraphy), archaeology and astronomy to present a new interpretation of the Venus Table, which tracks the observable phases of the second planet from the Sun. Using this multidisciplinary approach, he said, a new reading of the table demonstrates that the mathematical correction of their "Venus calendar" -- a sophisticated innovation -- was likely developed at the city of Chich'en Itza during the Terminal Classic period (AD 800-1000). What's more, the calculations may have been done under the patronage of K'ak' U Pakal K'awiil, one of the city's most prominent historical figures.

More:
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950527000300

notation. I believe prior to the Arabs, who are said to have learnt it from the Indians.

They are a wonderful case study, as Aldous Huxley pointed out, of the truth that peoples and nations who appear to be smarter, more intellectual than others, owe their worldly hegemony and wisdom, their more honed, worldly, analytical intelligence, entirely to a mysteriously heightened interest they took in the natural world at a particular period of time.

Christianity was the difference between a brilliant people such as the Chinese only very sporadically making major discoveries and inventions at very early dates, such as the compass, printing and gun-powder, and the continuous and purposeful investigation of the natural world of Christendom many centuries later: peoples who believed nature was subject to rationally-coherent laws, because they believed in a supremely-rational, divine law-maker, without prejudice to his transcendent nature : that the world was not an illusion, therefore, or to be despised.

As it happens, with the discovery of quantum mechanics, the world nevertheless has appeared to be far more illusory than was believed hitherto, our universe resembling a divinely discursive stream of thought, rather than solid matter.

In fact, our basic assumptions are the great leveller - which explains why a person with a gigantic IQ can be, and not infrequently is, an imbecile or not too bright, when it comes down to it.