I'm curious to what degree pre-Columbian civilizations aren't well understood due to the lack of evidence beyond our control, versus the lack of study/attention to the region. I imagine the dense and difficult terrain doesn't help either.
A huge part of the problem is the whole "burning every Maya book" thing that some spanish dudes decided to embark on. Various ethnic cleansing campaigns over the last two centuries or so, not to mention the impact of disease.
Its a real tragedy the colonizers didn't think to preserve the world they were conquering.
Modern Maya are starting to learn how to read and write their own language again but that only happened in the last 40 years or so. (They never forgot how to speak it.)
Most of their written knowledge was lost forever as you point out.
There were a large number of of Incan markets at elevation in the Andes. If your civilization was built around the productivity of terrace farming - then people will be living at high elevation.
I joke, a little. But it also makes me think of findings like all those ancient voluptuous “Venus” figurines found the world over. Signs of a global fertility goddess as archaeologists theorize, or merely an early form of Hustler magazine?
When the barbarians come to raid, it’s much easier to tip a rock over to stop them.
“I have the high ground” became a meme because of the Star Wars prequels but it was a legitimate force multiplier.
The US has a military strategy of air supremacy, notably different from air dominance, because of how easy it is to win when you can just let go of a rock and it’s guided to your enemy by gravity.
I don’t, libertarian ideals like that book die the first time they meet an organized group of bears[1]
Also if I recall they were in underground cities in that book and not clinging to the edge of a mountainside like invaders would be doing in regards to the content of the original post
Oh I’m sorry, that was a tongue in cheek reference to a known event that I assume /u/ancapistani is familiar with unless you have the luckiest random user name ever.
The point was that libertarian ideals fail whenever faced with a problem that requires a societal level response since the members are incapable of working together due to their own selfishness, e.x. Someone feeding the bears that were causing their neighbors harm
And the state hasn’t managed a solution to bears? They mustered the banners and had their hunters kill them all back when it was a problem.
The libertarians are the ones arguing that I should be allowed to run a bear farming factory next to the kindergarten with a suspiciously high number of bear related deaths per capita for children.
Its a real tragedy the colonizers didn't think to preserve the world they were conquering.
Most of their written knowledge was lost forever as you point out.
However the region has little in the way of flat ground and the nice flat valley floor is very very flood prone.
I joke, a little. But it also makes me think of findings like all those ancient voluptuous “Venus” figurines found the world over. Signs of a global fertility goddess as archaeologists theorize, or merely an early form of Hustler magazine?
“I have the high ground” became a meme because of the Star Wars prequels but it was a legitimate force multiplier.
The US has a military strategy of air supremacy, notably different from air dominance, because of how easy it is to win when you can just let go of a rock and it’s guided to your enemy by gravity.
Also if I recall they were in underground cities in that book and not clinging to the edge of a mountainside like invaders would be doing in regards to the content of the original post
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
The point was that libertarian ideals fail whenever faced with a problem that requires a societal level response since the members are incapable of working together due to their own selfishness, e.x. Someone feeding the bears that were causing their neighbors harm
And the state hasn’t managed a solution to bears? They mustered the banners and had their hunters kill them all back when it was a problem.
The libertarians are the ones arguing that I should be allowed to run a bear farming factory next to the kindergarten with a suspiciously high number of bear related deaths per capita for children.