[frankthetank]

National Geographic magazine has an article about the Maya rise and fall this month.

Do you see anything here that would suggest possible problems in our lifestyle today?

For some reason i can't get either this website or Opera to paste in some quotes from the article, so go and read pages 5 and 6 if you are short on time. There you will see what i'm talking about.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0708/feature2/

[SILENTTODD]

The Mayans are a good general example of what happens to civilization that reaches resource depletion.

But in a more pointed direction they show us the limitation of any post industrial civilization. They did incredible things with human labor alone, could possibly have done more with horses and mules (they didn’t have).

Human civilization might revert to a level of Rome (with many slaves) or China (also many slaves and serfs). But the high technology (hand calculators, cell phones, microwave ovens) will never return.

Our age may linger in human memory as the “Age of Wizards” when people talked to each other across the planet, or flew high in the sky, or touched the Moon.

I don’t think everyone will believe these stories 500 years from now.

[frankthetank]

I agree. They did things back them that many people today would think impossible without modern machinery. They fed 10 million people in an area today that has a population less then 1/10 that. That is without fertilizers and tractors. I was watching some of "I Robot" this weekend with my brother and made the comment that the future will look NOTHING like that, i told him think horse and buggies. No reaction from him, but he lives in a fantasy world anyways with 3 cars, 4000sq ft home, hot tub and a dog. It seems today everyone wants to be a "Mayan King", but only is possible due to oil doing all the heavy lifting.

I really enjoy reading about ancient civilizations. For how different they were, the similiarities are stunning. That part of the article above about one group of Mayans giving up agriculture all together and fighting for food from farmers reminds me of present day Africa (parts).

[holmes]

They consumed the forests. The soils were thin and the climate was dry. Not a good mixture for an agricultural society. They used the forests in the kilns to create lyme. This obsession to constantly increase the size of their temples helped in the fall. they spead out into the highland. They never let their fields lie fallow speeding soil depletion and nutrient leaching. Then a prolonged drought hit with no ecological buffering capabilities. Sounds familiar? Oil is keeping it ALL together right now.

[OilIsMastery]

The Mayans are just another example of God dooming a pagan nation. Sodom. Gomorrah. Tikal. They are all the same. Godless savages with zero morality.

[skyemoor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilIsMastery', 'T')he Mayans are just another example of God dooming a pagan nation. Sodom. Gomorrah. Tikal. They are all the same. Godless savages with zero morality.

[Cloud9]

The Mayans were a theocracy. When they discovered that their God Kings could not deliver on their promises of protection they turned on them. The same thing happened to Christianity during the Black Death. The priests died just as fast as the commoners. Rational people came to realize that magic did not cut it. That gave rise to the Renaissance.

When you have spent hours on your knees praying for the life of your daughter and she dies anyway, you come to realize God is not on the other end of the line.

Ps. Don’t tell me that her death was God’s will. If her death was his will that would make him more petulant than a small child.

[Alcassin]

Cloud9:

His will - I call him psychopath and murderer.

Eg. You worship and pray to someone who doesn't show mercy and kill your beloved. After all if you love him more, that's called Stockholm Syndrome, and you should be treated by psychiatrist.

When people worship and pray to an Idol, Statue, Cross or a word. Idol doesn't respond when your daughter is dying, you treat this idol as it is absolutely good and loving. You don't need medical treatment but you redefine word "love" and "good" for that monster you worship...

Religion is an excuse for pain, and a great opportunity to avoid reason and defy critical thinking. Mayans were highly religious when TSHTF. They started to slaughter each other instead of looking for an answer - why?

[Cloud9]

God is. We are in his ant farm. Good and evil live in the hearts of men. Men can choose to do either good or evil. Nature does neither. If a shark eats you, then that was the natural order of things. It is wrong to be angry with God. God built the universe. He is entitled to a vacation.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilIsMastery', 'T')he Mayans are just another example of God dooming a pagan nation. Sodom. Gomorrah. Tikal. They are all the same. Godless savages with zero morality.

[Alcassin]

So your point is that nature is neutral from moral point of view.
If something is neutral we can destroy it because destroying cannot be good or evil.

I don't believe in natural order: if shark is god's creation, why he created shark that kills his worshippers? From moral point of view god's creation must be good, so nature must be good, as god is seen to be total-absolute-100%-good. Natural means more or less darwinian and this statement doesn't include god.

If something is absolute good it can't create the opposite. If so - he can't be absolute good, or the most ruthless things we do cannot be evil. Simple logic. Only religious people redefine logic.

[vision-master]

"For every truth, the opposite is equally true".

[Cloud9]

I said that God is. I never said he was good or bad. God made the clock, then took a lunch break.

Nature is neutral in the sense that it is running out its natural cycles. The sun comes up the sun goes down. We are but a wink in the eye of time. Go stand on the rim of the grand canyon and spit a mile. Then, try to pretend to yourself that we matter. We will be lucky if in a hundred years anyone even knows we were here.

[eastbay]

Frank,

Yes, the Mayan population may have increased and reached 10 million, but they certainly wouldn't have remained near that level for very long.

Some have the erroneous view that the Mayans lived happily maintaining that level of population density for many centuries. With or without European contact, they were past the point of overshoot and a mass die-off was probably looming due to extreme soil, water, and forest depletion. They would have had to fight their way into a neighboring land or die trying. Europeans most likely arrived just as the excitement was about to begin.

[lotrfan55345]

The Mayans never had any European contact...

[holmes]

Ever hear of the Spanish Conquest of the Yukatan?
Spanish=European.
Yes they did have contact. Lots of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_co ... cat%C3%A1n

[NWMossBack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lotrfan55345', 'T')he Mayans never had any European contact...