From
Sham Jaffs what happened last week newsletter
Mexico: I've talked about this technology before, and I'll talk about it again: lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging. Lasers (!) revealed an ancient Zapotec city, Guiengola, in southern Mexico. Basically, new research, led by a post-doctoral fellow from McGill University, Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, shot lasers from an aircraft to map out the land underneath dense vegetation, to "see" the structures and ancient remains that weren’t visible before. So, now we know that Guiengola was established around the 14th and 15th centuries and was a significant site for the Zapotec people. Researchers had a hint it existed, but lidar really brought the whole place into focus. They found that the city covered a massive area—360 hectares (890 acres)—and had over 1,100 buildings, walls, roads, temples, and communal spaces like ball courts. It was clearly organized into distinct zones for elites and commoners (ugh, classism), and there was even a river nearby. The city thrived for about 150 years, from 1350 to 1500, before it was abandoned shortly before the Spanish arrived in 1521. (
LiveScience)
Brazil: Researchers have uncovered rock art (!) that's over 9,000 years old, and it’s located right next to dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago. The discovery was made at Serrote do Letreiro, in the Sousa Basin, and it’s completely changing how we think about early human history. The ancient petroglyphs (complicated for, well, the rock carvings) were intentionally placed near the dinosaur footprints—some are even as close as just a couple of inches away. This suggests that "the artists" in question were not just passing by the prints but were engaging with them in some meaningful way. It’s as if they saw the dinosaur footprints and decided to immortalize them in their own art, which could mean that early humans had some kind of ritualistic or symbolic connection to these fossils. (
Arkeonews) In related news, Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with leading a conspiracy to overturn the government after he lost the election in 2022. (
Le Monde)
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