Trending on facebook: Star Pupil finds lost Mayan cities by studying ancient charts of the night sky from his bedroom
(Can't post links yet)
A fascinating story, reported on such reputable pages as iflscience and the Telegraph. However, My BS meter responded particularly strongly, to the "scientists baffled by smart kid" trope, and to the unqualified assertion that the Maya predicted the end of the world, which the did not, and did not claim to.
Perhaps someone can answer some questions which the crack journalists at gizmodo missed:
* Did the Maya really have the surveying skills to duplicate star maps with cities on the ground over wide areas?
* Did the Maya really not consider arable land or access to water when choosing city locations?
* Why are the articles on this devoid of any examples of, say, six or seven cities that are unmistakably in the pattern of bright stars?
* How unlikely is it to find in any random location, some artifact of a civilization that dominated mesoamerica for two and a half millennia?
* How are "ancient star charts" any different from the modern ones at the level of detail we are talking about here?
(Can't post links yet)
A fascinating story, reported on such reputable pages as iflscience and the Telegraph. However, My BS meter responded particularly strongly, to the "scientists baffled by smart kid" trope, and to the unqualified assertion that the Maya predicted the end of the world, which the did not, and did not claim to.
Perhaps someone can answer some questions which the crack journalists at gizmodo missed:
* Did the Maya really have the surveying skills to duplicate star maps with cities on the ground over wide areas?
* Did the Maya really not consider arable land or access to water when choosing city locations?
* Why are the articles on this devoid of any examples of, say, six or seven cities that are unmistakably in the pattern of bright stars?
* How unlikely is it to find in any random location, some artifact of a civilization that dominated mesoamerica for two and a half millennia?
* How are "ancient star charts" any different from the modern ones at the level of detail we are talking about here?
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