Ancient Mayans Likely Had Fountains and Toilets

[Adsos Letter]

Source: LiveScience
Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience

The ancient Mayans may have had enough engineering know-how to master running water, creating fountains and even toilets by controlling water pressure, scientists now suggest.


Perhaps the earliest known example of the intentional creation of water pressure was found on the island of Crete in a Minoan palace dating back to roughly 1400 BC. In the New World, the ability to generate water pressure was previously thought to have begun only with the arrival of the Spanish.


Scientists investigated the Mayan center at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. At its height, this major site, inhabited from roughly 100 to 800 AD, had some 1,500 structures - residences, palaces, and temples - holding some 6,000 inhabitants under a series of powerful rulers.


The center at Palenque also had what was arguably the most unique and intricate system of water management known anywhere in the Maya lowlands. These involved elaborate subterranean aqueducts to deal with the spring-fed streams that naturally divide the landscape and could otherwise cause flooding or erosion.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091223/sc_livescience/ancientmayanslikelyhadfountainsandtoilets

[jgraz]

1. Hopefully not combined...

[Hissyspit]

6. Ha!:

http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=29

[KittyWampus]

17. Ceiling Cat is watching the "fountain".

Unintentional funny.

[Hissyspit]

18. Ceiling Cat sees all...

OP content.

He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad and will tombstone your ass. :D

[robdogbucky]

2. 6,000 inhabitants, that's nothing

Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan
by Jerry Camarillo Dunn, Jr
http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/pyramids-of-the-sun-and-moon-at-teotihuacan-landmark.htm

"Towering and mysterious, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon rise above silent Teotihuacán, an empty city that once bustled with as many as 200,000 people and stood at the center of Mexico's pre-Hispanic empire.

Erected by a virtually unknown culture in the first century B.C., the city sprawled over an area larger than imperial Rome. But by A.D. 750 it had been abruptly abandoned, perhaps because of disaster or drought.

Five hundred years later the Aztecs came upon Teotihuacán -- with its pyramids, temples, apartments, and ball courts -- and adopted it as a center of pilgrimage.

At roughly 210 feet high, the Pyramid of the Sun ranks as one of the largest pyramids in the world. (It is about half as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.) The builders raised the Pyramid of the Sun around A.D. 100, somehow transporting and erecting three million tons of stone, brick, and rubble without benefit of the wheel, beasts of burden, or metal tools..."




I Saw some amazing artifacts on display from this ancient Mayan city at the De Young Museum in SF yesterday.


robdogbucky says check it out

[comrade snarky]

5. Teotihuacan must have been amazing

It's one of my favorite pre-columbian sites.

The whole city was covered in brilliant white stucco and painted with frescoes. They crushed mica into the stucco so it sparkled in the sunlight. You can imagine how that city must have looked.



There was nothing else like it in North America. Teotihuacan is an Aztec word, means city of the gods because the Aztec didn't think humans built it.

It was more than a ceremonial center like so many Mayan cities, people lived and worked there. Teotihuacan had dwellings that were kind of a cross between a Roman villa and a modern apartment block. Multi family buildings that look like they were based around a common industry. It was one of the largest cities in the world at the time an most of that population could have gathered in the courtyard of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Quite unusual for meso-America.

Some classic Mayan cities (Uxmal was one if I remember correctly) began depicting their leaders in Teotihuacan styles of dress. They were that influential.

Oh, and to tie it all in... They didn't have flush toilets but they did route the underground rivers into a kind of constant flush bathroom. :-)

[TlalocW]

10. One of my faves too

The first time I visited was in high school. There was an interchange of students between my school and a school in Puebla. Unfortunately, we went on a day that was a national holiday, a Catholic holiday, and an ancient Aztec holiday. So Teotihuacan was PACKED with visitors - mainly families enjoying an outing together, but there were also performers in Aztec garb, and new agers standing in circles on the flat tops of some of the smaller structures, holding hands and chanting. The Pyramid of the Sun's staircases were completely packed so a group of us in the interchange - Americans and Mexicans - decided to climb the walls of the Pyramid all the way to the top. It was quite easy actually - there were plenty of rocks jutting out to grab onto.

The second time was in college through a program at my university. This time it was a cloudy day, and no one was there except for another smaller group from America. This time I got to climb both the Sun and the Moon, and I got to test my Slinky that I brought on both of them. :) We visited a lot of pyramids built by different cultures, and I wanted to know which ones were the best Slinky-wise. Zapotecan pyramids at Monte Alban turned out to be the best.

TlalocW

[comrade snarky]

13. Good to know!

Did you get to Copan in the Yucatan? I think the big pyramid there would rate highly for Slinkability.

I haven't been to the Zapotec or Mixtec cities yet. I want to try and arrange it so I can go there around the Day of the Dead because Oaxaca does it up on that holiday. I've been told the local graveyards are hip deep in flowers and the celebrations and costumes are not to be missed.



Damn it... now I want to bring a slinky.

[TlalocW]

16. Most of our time on the program was spent in Oaxaca

It was in July though. I'd like to go to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead. It's funny because in Tulsa, where I live, there's a sizable Mexican population, and a local gringo artist started a Dia de Los Muertos celebration - with local artists, bands, kids' activities, people making and displaying altars, etc. He did this after going to Oaxaca over Dia de los Muertos. The first time I went was with a college friend who was visiting me. It was really cold so we went inside one of the open buildings to get some hot chocolate. I had a deck of cards on me (I'm a magician/balloon twister on the side) and preceded to show him a 3 card monte routine (where you have say a 3 of spades and clubs and the queen of hearts, and the sucker tries to find the queen but can't). The artist came over, literally screaming, "Oh, my god! This is great because Mexicans play games in the graveyards during Dia de Los Muertos!" He then started to talk about Oaxaca, and I joined in the conversation asking him where he had gone, if he had seen this church, that ruin, visited this small nearby village known for so-and-so. His enthusiasm dropped off when he realized he was talking to someone who knew as much about Oaxaca (at least) as he did. :)

Never got to go to Copan. Been to Teotihuacan, Cholula (Puebla), Monte Alban, Mitla, Dainzu, and a few smaller sites. And of course, the pyramid inside the subway close to the Mexican City zocalo. :)

TlalocW

[KakistocracyHater]

3. I have always been told there were water systems already here & Spaniards

destroyed them. "In the New World, the ability to generate water pressure was previously thought to have begun only with the arrival of the Spanish." What a crude inversion.

http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Hy-La/Irrigation-Systems-Ancient.html There is only a little about it here. It might have been Archaeology magazine, it mentioned that Mexico City is not exactly situated very well water-wise..... & that a corn & coffee-growing system has been uncovered that indicated irrigation systems must have been used.

[comrade snarky]

7. Tenochtitlan (Aztec Mexico City) didn't need a lot of irrigation

It was built in the middle of a lake. They did build aqueducts and dikes to keep the fresh water from going brackish though.



Most agriculture around Tenochtitlan was done on man made floating islands called chinampas. They produced around 2/3 of he food for a city of 250,000 to 325,000 people. Elsewhere in pre-columbian America irrigation methods were quite commonly used though not terribly advanced compared to say, Asia where rice crops required far more complex care.


:edited to get the dang picture working

[KakistocracyHater]

14. looks like Venice

& that was what I was talking about, "man-made floating islands"-yet supposedly the Spanish brought plumbing with them? Ha!

[comrade snarky]

15. The Conquistadors themselves compared it to Venice

They said it was as big as any great city in the world and one of the finest. This from people not known for complimenting anything outside Europe. :-)

It's sad there is so little left but at the same time it's kind of neat that Mexico's capital is in the same place.

Then again it's easy to be here now and wax poetic about the Aztec, I might have other things to say if they had just sacrificed 5,000 of my friends to the gods. There was a reason most everyone else in the region turned on them at the first opportunity.

Aztecs, amazing civilization but crappy neighbors.

[KakistocracyHater]

21. didn't the invaders purposely encourage dissension among the various

peoples, to make it easier to conquer them?

That is even more tragic to hear how THEY even compared it to Venice. I have the latest Archaeology mag & they mention the whole 2012 thing & have pics & line drawings showing the actual glyphs that, sadly were chipped off by Monks of some order.....it really says......."Concerning our 13.0.0.0.0, Monument 6 at Tortuguero in the state of Tabasco tells of the descent of some transcendent entity to earth." They say they glyphs have been eroded-but I've said my opinion of why they're illegible now.

The "Blowgunner Pot" is very interesting, with what looks like a face in the bottom of the tree, a scorpion right at the base of the tree, a bird deity IN the tree......& a snake behind the 'blowgun guy'.

[SpiralHawk]

11. Hell, there was lots of writing, too -- and not just the Mayans

The invaders from overseas (Republicons of Yesteryear) made systematic work of destroying the beauty, intelligence, and spirituality that was here...

[xchrom]

4. I was a Mayan princess int former life --

And I had a toilet!'

that's actually amazing and wonderful - my former
princess life not withstanding.

[SpiralHawk]

12. Too bad you had no toilet paper

Maybe next lifetime...

[comrade snarky]

8. Very cool article

Thanks for posting.

It would be Palenque. They were just cool and they knew it.

They're all "Look at us, we have pressurized running water and big comb decorations on our buildings. Why? Because they're sweet and in 1000 years no one's gonna know why we did it, that's why."

[TlalocW]

9. In 1994, I had a chance to visit Palenque

Actually, it was more of a chance - I was one of two students in a group that was taking a class in Mexico through my American university that had paid for an extra excursion to Palenque. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Villa Hermosa (it's not - oil town... it feels has there's an oily sheen covering the entire town), we were told by the locals that the Zapatistas (who were very active at that time in Chiapas) were stopping tour buses and "asking" for donations. So alas, we didn't go.

It sounded amazing though, and I'm always interested in news like this.

TlalocW

[Lucky Luciano]

19. Great! Bookmarking for later. Going to the Yucatan in two weeks! nt

[Lucky Luciano]

20. Great! Bookmarking for later. Going to the Yucatan in two weeks! nt