Anthropology

Judi Lynn

(160,631 posts) Tue Mar 24, 2015, 04:26 PM Mar 2015

Archaeologists discover Maya 'melting pot'

Archaeologists discover Maya 'melting pot'
Mar 23, 2015

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Round structure uncovered at Ceibal, from about 500 B.C.
Credit: Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona
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Archaeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed new information about the Maya civilization's transition from a mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary way of life.

Led by University of Arizona archaeologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, the team's excavations of the ancient Maya lowlands site of Ceibal suggest that as the society transitioned from a heavy reliance on foraging to farming, mobile communities and settled groups co-existed and may have come together to collaborate on construction projects and participate in public ceremonies.

The findings, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge two common assumptions: that mobile and sedentary groups maintained separate communities, and that public buildings were constructed only after a society had fully put down roots.

"There has been the theory that sedentary and mobile groups co-exited in various parts of the world, but most people thought the sedentary and mobile communities were separate, even though they were in relatively close areas," said Inomata, a UA professor of anthropology and lead author of the PNAS study. "Our study presents the first relatively concrete evidence that mobile and sedentary people came together to build a ceremonial center."

More:
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-archaeologists-maya-pot.html#jCp

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Archaeologists discover Maya 'melting pot' (Original Post) Judi Lynn Mar 2015 OP

Jungle festivals led to first Maya cities Judi Lynn Mar 2015 #1

Judi Lynn

(160,631 posts)

1. Jungle festivals led to first Maya cities

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Tue Mar 24, 2015, 04:38 PM

Mar 2015

Jungle festivals led to first Maya cities
19:00 23 March 2015 by Fred Pearce

The great Central American jungle civilisation of the Maya is renowned for its stepped pyramids, temples and great urban plazas, where human sacrifice may have been routine. But a surprising story is emerging from detailed examination of archaeological remains. Whatever came later, one of the Maya's oldest known great cities, at Ceibal in Guatemala, began as a multicultural love-in.

The first great pyramid builders of Central America, it turns out, were mostly itinerant hunters and gatherers of no fixed abode, who began meeting for ad hoc ceremonies and rituals in the jungle about 3000 years ago.

The findings overturn conventional archaeological thinking that ancient cities all emerged from prosperous farming communities, and that big religious ceremonial complexes were only built in the most successful cities. In the case of the Maya, it was the other way round. The first builders and worshippers were more new-age hippy festivalgoers than yeoman farmers or urban sophisticates.

Only hundreds of years later did their successors settle, take up full-time farming and build a city to live in. The new finding follows recent evidence from elsewhere that religious buildings came before agriculture and settlements.

More:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27225-jungle-festivals-led-to-first-maya-cities.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news#.VRHDb2dFDDc

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