How did the Maya survive?

2/13/2026 at 5:20:23 PM

Incredibly interesting.

Amazing to think at the very moment Europe was entering the Dark Ages, the Vikings were starting to raid, and Muhammad was having his visions, this civilization had built something comparable to what the Roman Empire had done in italy..

by redwood

2/13/2026 at 6:26:14 PM

> Europe was entering the Dark Ages

The "dark ages" never happened the way it is imagined in pop-culture. There was a genuine decline at the fringes, which includes Britain which maybe why it was so ingrained in Anglophone culture, but also history written by imperialists like Gibbon who thought the decline of Empires an intrinsically bad and regressive thing.

The Eastern Roman Empire went on, the western broke up into successor states. Some things got worse, some things got better, there was progress made (especially for women and people at the bottom like slaves), and the early medieval period laid the foundations for progress later on.

> Muhammad was having his visions

Is that a bad thing? I know less about the history of that region than some others, but I think you need to look at prior conditions in places such as the Arabian peninsula to assess that.

by graemep

2/13/2026 at 6:56:25 PM

The European Dark Ages was also a narrative largely invented by the Renaissance, which was trying to distinguish itself from what came before. Material wellbeing did improve overall, but that was because a huge portion of the population was killed off from the plague, freeing up tons of resources.

by helterskelter

2/13/2026 at 6:48:13 PM

>"Is that a bad thing?"

I think they were just setting the Age of Man here. Time framing it in history so others would know when we are talking about. It's fine.

by reactordev

2/13/2026 at 7:58:11 PM

> The "dark ages" never happened the way it is imagined in pop-culture.

They definitely did. Books stopped being published, even the slightest deviation from the ideas of an all-powerful church and nobility would be progressively punished by censors, mutilation, or execution, and basic reasoning skills atrophied in service of weird nonsense theological arguments that make current postmodern academic culture look reasonable.

We don't know what normal people were doing, technology advanced at a snail's pace, we don't even know where many cities and towns were located. We know far more about the Romans and the Greeks than we know about some parts of Dark Age Europe. We're very lucky that some sense of religious nostalgia for the Classical age (from the fact that the Christian religion was an outgrowth of the late Roman state) kept them from losing or destroying all of the knowledge and documents of antiquity.

The Western world was saved from 1000 years of stupidity by the Protestants. It wasn't that they were geniuses, but that they thought that there was some value to the individual other than service to the imbred descendants of Roman generals. This reinvented the concepts of philosophical disagreement and intellectual productivity in Europe.

The "there was no Dark Ages" revision is from people who would love to take us back to the Dark Ages. Nostalgic for the rule of elites, unfettered by the opinions of a population kept uneducated and on the edge of starvation. People associate the slaver culture of the US South with hillbillies, but they associated themselves, with their elaborate gowns and ballrooms, with a renewal of European culture, with the slaves playing the part of the serfs.

Catholicism is the only reason we didn't reach our current level of technical and intellectual development 1000 years ago. Somehow, with their weakness, Catholics have generally become far more intellectually sound than the psychopathic libertarian elites that own us now. Their nihilism and narcissism will end up giving us another 1000 years of darkness.

We've gone from a history described entirely in terms of nobles arguing with and sleeping with each other to a present entirely described in terms of oligarchs arguing with and sleeping with each other. The last few hundred years will one day probably be described as the "Popular Period." Historians will describe it as the short span of history in which it is trivially easy to find the price of a loaf of bread, or the rules of card games. "At least 20% of the commercial writings from that period have survived."

by pessimizer

2/13/2026 at 5:39:23 PM

Amazing, but it's also terrifying that the Maya civilization then faltered, instead of getting onto the exponential development spiral. The great Roman civilization also faltered, but at least the Byzantium continued to carry some of its achievements. The great Arabian civilization was for some time more advanced than European (which was in the middle of the dark ages), but it also did not stay progressing for too long. There's no guarantee that our current "western civilization" line is not going to falter and decline in a similar way.

by nine_k

2/13/2026 at 6:00:20 PM

And that’s fine. Another follows after. If we leave them something.

by Scrapemist

2/13/2026 at 6:09:48 PM

Part of the problem is that industrialization was achieved by exploiting globs of easily available resources. But we used them all.

We haven't left anyone something. It could very well be that we climbed the ladder and burned it behind us.

by mrguyorama

2/13/2026 at 8:01:30 PM

What do you mean, we haven't left anyone something?

by philipallstar

2/13/2026 at 7:52:23 PM

That's how amazing Rome was - doing something far larger 1000 years prior to the Maya.

by philipallstar

2/13/2026 at 5:54:32 PM

All of this without pack animals or the wheel.

by lapetitejort

2/13/2026 at 6:53:59 PM

The Dark Ages never happened. They had electric lighting and then the sunlight came out.

by renewiltord

2/13/2026 at 7:14:21 PM

>Some Maya cities were established hundreds of years before the founding of Rome, and they included significantly larger architecture that still stands.

The Pantheon is qualitatively different than the massive pyramids the Maya built.

by ljsprague

2/13/2026 at 6:44:29 PM

There must be incredible pressure on historians to be contrarians. Who is going to pay any attention if you are like "yeah, I've been employing novel techniques and new tech and discovered that all the stuff everyone has been saying is spot on" Not criticizing this article in particular but I am skeptical of this sort of stuff because I feel like the outcome of the research is predetermined.

by 1234letshaveatw

2/13/2026 at 5:30:30 PM

1491 is a great book about the history of the Americas before Columbus.

https://a.co/d/03l04Lvv

by jasonpeacock

2/13/2026 at 10:34:45 PM

I'll recommend Jungles of Stone - the story of explorers Stephens and Catherwood - the first Europeans to document and explore the sites of the ancient Maya.

by ks2048

2/13/2026 at 7:25:09 PM

I second this recommendation!

by thomasjb

2/13/2026 at 2:49:09 PM

The title is clickbait but the article itself is highly informative and interesting to read. Highly recommend it.

by ViktorRay

2/13/2026 at 4:31:46 PM

Not sure if it's 100% clickbait, there is some really interesting stuff I didn't know.

Also it makes me realize that all indigenous peoples across what you call the Americas have been/are being subjected to all kinds of discrimination and systematic extermination, from North America all the way to the island of Tierra del Fuego, and of course here in Colombia. We all try to hide our own past for some reason and feel ashamed of it while ignoring the spaniard/european culture and beliefs they brought there have huge flaws compared to what was already here for thousands of years.

by Gualdrapo

2/13/2026 at 5:38:39 PM

That's true, the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity. But let's not romanticize the indigenous cultures either. They were equally flawed and did just as terrible things to other local groups.

https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundred...

by nradov

2/13/2026 at 10:31:33 PM

The proof is in the pudding. You can not conquer with so few so much unless, the locals welcome you as a useful liberator from grotesq tyranny and try to use you as a tool of liberation. The conquistadores are a display of how volatile tyranny based empires are. To then only be replaced by even more tyranny, after the chaos of revolution and disease.

by assaddayinh

2/13/2026 at 6:06:00 PM

> the European explorers and colonists did commit horrific crimes against humanity

not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history, with around 34 million people killed from 1500 up to 2025

with that said, people romanticize them too much. canibalism, war and also a (probably) big impact in one of the most rich ecosystems of Earth: the Amazon was ripped with their practices of burning stuff and planting dominant species among the forest that reduced for sure the amount of biodiversity in their +15,000 years of existence there. tho not defending EU ppl ripping out their forest till the border of rivers

by luqtas

2/13/2026 at 10:32:57 PM

These super lative rich western diabolism always sounds like trump when i read it.

by assaddayinh

2/13/2026 at 6:32:54 PM

>not only horrific but the biggest hollocaust in the entire human history

Does this number include deaths due to introduced diseases?

by ljsprague

2/13/2026 at 6:50:29 PM

If it does then the Black Death introduced by Genghis Khan in the Middle East and Europe is likely higher.

by mc32

2/13/2026 at 7:39:07 PM

Where can I read this certainty of destroyed biodiversity? That sounds like an extremely unsupported position, considering that the Amazon has the highest rates of biodiversity today.

The continued belittling of indigenous forestry practices contributes to out of control wildfires.

by ab5tract

2/13/2026 at 7:49:14 PM

https://portal.amelica.org/ameli/journal/181/1813954027/html...

https://www.sp-amazon.org/publications

by luqtas

2/13/2026 at 8:12:41 PM

> The forest itself, paleo-scientists of all stripes say, is much more domesticated than previously thought.

This implies that the biodiversity is a result of (or, at the very least, supported by) the indigenous practices, which is a far cry from your claim that biodiversity suffered from those practices.

by ab5tract

2/13/2026 at 8:35:53 PM

have you actually read anything? indigenous were pointed as responsibles for cultivating dominant species which had an impact and shaped the flora. the last website i published is a whole book showing how its rich biodiversity happened over multi million year processes. it also points out the impact on the "funneling" of species indigenous occupations had

i still think despite their impact, they were exemplar compared to what we had on the rest of the world (but i never studied Asia). but it's not like they were magicians that had no impact on anything and lived in complete synergy with nature by increasing biodiversity. and if you think cultivating biological dominant species across a forest has no impact i suggest you to research on the many examples of alien flora effects on various ecosystem on modernity or even try to throw some Hawaiian Baby Woodrose somewhere out their native land to check how much these species take over anothers. they probably killed and reduced species expression to settle themselves there. but cest la vie. living has an impact after all

by luqtas

2/13/2026 at 6:46:22 PM

That number is statistically too high.

Most historians pinpoint it at around 5-15 million. Communist Russia (3-20 million) and Communist China (15-40 million) both killed more.

by gjsman-1000

2/13/2026 at 7:28:27 PM

your number is about North America. i hate when people sum America to the North. we are chatting about everyone from both continents

i went to check on the doc. i watched (https://youtu.be/laW_Yf6N4kU?si=vi3KY9prfdqfNybC&t=1176) and i have to make a correction: they point out that the majority of the 80 million people living on America were killed on the first 100 years of colonization. they do talk impartially as it being one of the biggest holocaust known to the humanity. i don't agree on excluding death numbers from disease. it wasn't something like the Black Death (25 million) where effected countries weren't in war, nor they were also being blown out of existence by superior (war) technology

and 80 million aren't even the highest estimations historians suggest [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi... ¶ some historians point up to 100 million people killed

by luqtas

2/13/2026 at 6:10:35 PM

The Aztecs in particular were kind of uniquely terrible, both for their own citizens and for every oppressed pseudo-vassal-state around them. It's one of those weird accidents of history that Spanish colonizers were able to step into the power vacuum after the fall of Tenochtitlan and have at least some people genuinely think 'yes, this is better than the last boss'.

by crooked-v

2/13/2026 at 6:45:27 PM

They were kind of to blame for the fall of Tenochtitlan no? Cortez was welcomed as an "Ambassador" vs as a conqueror.

by reactordev

2/13/2026 at 9:00:13 PM

They rather put in with Cortez then send their kids off to the annual Aztec Hunger Games [Flower Wars].

by PepperdineG

2/13/2026 at 6:41:21 PM

While I have no doubt that most Western colonial empires did not have the conquered's best interests at heart, I've read a theory (particularly about the Spaniards and Portugese in Latin America), is just Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization, which is a horrible crime to utter in some circles, but I feel like the evolution of Western systems of governance, diplomacy, technology, culture made it superior to most civilizations in the marketplace of ideas.

One could see the mass appeal of a faraway king who promises three square meals, a decent lodging, a reasonable legal system, and preaches unconditional brotherly love, to every human being. And even if some of those things are only true some of the time, when taken in aggregate, this led to these people winning just often enough that the scales tipped in their favor over time.

And while most non-Western civilizations were certainly superior over certain time periods in some aspect, those who ended up not being conquered, either had constant contact with the West to know what to expect, or recognized their own shortcomings and rapidly endeavored to remedy them.

I don't think military conquest of a faraway land can be maintained without the consent of the populance, certainly not as a profitable endeavor, and that usually involves offering something to the populance they couldn't get otherwise.

There are plenty of examples of people subjugated for centuries who have kept their religion, customs and identity, likewise most of the jihadists who shout 'Death To America!' probably still like Star Wars.

by torginus

2/13/2026 at 7:25:02 PM

"Westerners are in aggregate were just better at running civilization"

If being good at running a civilisation means being good at making war and enslaving, then we objectivly were better, as we conquered and they lost.

But if civilized means being in higher spirit and have a more happy population, then the proof needs to be different.

by lukan

2/13/2026 at 10:37:36 PM

The middle eastern cultures where better at that and that wasnt enough. Its in the ability to peoduce institutions which then produce a tech/power gradient that allows exploitation. Keeping cultures artificially alive that can not do that is artificially prolonging inevitable change.

by assaddayinh

2/13/2026 at 9:08:38 PM

The reason the entire concept of 'Westerners' exist, is because empires who became dominant in the aforementioned dimensions conquered, subjugated other peoples on the continent, or others were forced to adapt to their standards to avoid the same fate.

In a couple hundred years these populations in many ways were quite indistinguishable from their conquerors, as they adopted their customs and ways of running society.

Many of these conqured peoples while becoming Westernized culturally, didn't escape the yoke of their conquerors until much later.

This process was repeated in Latin America.

I know there are a lot of politically motivated people are interested in simple stories of the virtuous locals versus the evil West, but the same story played out pretty much everywhere over different continents and timeframes.

I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

by torginus

2/13/2026 at 10:20:24 PM

"I'm not sure if Romes conquest of the Gauls was any less brutal than the Spanish conquest of Mexico."

Likely not, but both Rome and Spanish are usually considered "western" civilisations. But the Mayas did conquer too (and partly sacrificed the captured).

by lukan

2/13/2026 at 7:24:00 PM

Civilisations in the Americas were significantly less technologically developed than those in Eurasia. We focus our analysis on the Spanish and Portuguese, but the outcome would not have been much different had their place been taken by the Ottoman or the Chinese.

The Mayan and the Aztecs were roughly at a similar level of development as ancient Sumer or Babylon: good agricultural practices, irrigation, astronomy, elaborated culture, rich mythologies, very basic metallurgy, early state structures, etc.

Sumer and Babylon were great civilisations whose legacy can still be traced today. The same is true for the Maya and the Aztec. Had you visited any of them in their prime, you would have been awed by their skill and sophistication.

And yet, think of everything that happened in Eurasia between Hammurabi and Columbus, and you will get a sense of how wide the gap was when the two worlds met.

by felipeerias

2/13/2026 at 9:22:41 PM

I'm glad you brought up the contrast between the Aztecs and Ottomans - the majority of South America was inhabited by tribes similar to Native Americans in the North.

The Aztecs are noteworthy because of having an empire to conquer.

I am not suggesting that their civilizations did not have artistic or cultural merit, but I think even in a fictional alternate history where the Spanish decided to peacefully trade with Montezuma, I bet a couple hundred years later these people would've had mechanical looms and walked around in tailored suits just the same as their European counterparts.

Not to speak of an what an empire gaing such powerful technologies and ideas about running society would've done to its neighbors.

by torginus

2/13/2026 at 8:16:14 PM

If the "marketplace of ideas" with regards to civilizations had been some sort of borderless utopia where people would just naturally emigrate to the best civilization and become members in equal standing there, you could argue like this.

Unfortunately, what actually happened was brutal invasion and dehumanization.

"We are higher developed than this other group, therefore we have the right to subjugate them, take all their resources, enslave them and even kill them" was essentially the classic justification of colonialism for a long time.

by xg15

2/13/2026 at 8:55:26 PM

No empire in the world would have been able to accomplish what the Spaniards did if the indigenous population of millions decided to put up a strong resistance against them.

The 2014 Ukraine invasion worked because the nation was splintered and demoralized, and the Russians could just roll in and take what tey wanted. The 2022 didn't because the Ukrainians were unified and willing to fight, despite a much higher degree of military readiness on the Russian side.

But going back, over time, the native population became serfs, picked up the language, culture, religion of their conquerors, they even intermarried to a significant degree. Latin America is full of people with both European and native ancestry to some degree.

Yes they were serfs, but so were most European peasants at that time.

And only a couple hundred years later, as the Spanish empire collapsed, these people, culturally Westernized at this point, threw off the yoke and formed their independent countries, with Mexico starting it's own empire.

I just cannot imagine a credible scenario in which even if Western colonial powers didn't manage to conquer the territory of Mexico, they wouldn't have been Westernized to a significant degree, by the Aztec rulers themselves starting a Meiji style modernization.

by torginus

2/13/2026 at 3:39:37 PM

[flagged]

by SunshineTheCat

2/13/2026 at 4:05:10 PM

Corn, beans and squash. Everyday. Oh, you have to grow it and harvest it without tractors. Caloric balance achieved!

by seemaze

2/13/2026 at 4:36:09 PM

And a layer of tropical diseases/parasites would also help churn through calories. They may have been in better shape but few sane people would claim they were actually any healthier than we are today.

by sandworm101

2/13/2026 at 4:51:55 PM

All but those few sane people would agree!

No claims of longevity or quality are under litigation; It was merely informed speculation on The ultimate diet pill that only the Maya people knew..

by seemaze

2/13/2026 at 5:08:04 PM

Vitamin D would be at peak too ...

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2/13/2026 at 4:18:02 PM

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by domoregood

2/13/2026 at 5:59:13 PM

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by javier_e06

2/13/2026 at 2:53:30 PM

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by agentzed

2/13/2026 at 3:01:09 PM

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by krapp

2/13/2026 at 3:03:01 PM

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by agentzed

2/13/2026 at 3:08:17 PM

Please leave.

You aren't entertaining, you aren't insightful, you aren't even that creative. You aren't an original source on anything, you're just regurgitating UFO memes that went stale 20 years ago and vague woo-woo shit that only seems profound to the utterly ignorant.

I won't engage with you again.

by krapp

2/13/2026 at 3:18:44 PM

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by agentzed

2/13/2026 at 3:42:01 PM

I have spoken with them and they said they've never heard of you.

by parineum

2/13/2026 at 3:50:45 PM

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by agentzed