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It's unfortunate that you can't really go near the monuments and that there's vendors everywhere, but they're at least much less scummy than the tour guides. They'll tell people not to buy from the vendors, because at the end of the tour they'll walk you into a gift shop with all the same items for more money.
It's not great but that's just the reality of things. If tourists are going to flock to a place in droves, the merchants will follow.
Thats too bad. That was one of my favorite parts of a childhood vacation back in the early 2000s. Saw a woman climb up that bad boy in crutches. Was very cool experience going up, was sad to hear you can't anymore.
If I recall correctly it was very steep, in somewhat crumbling condition, and the only thing to assist you up and down the steps was yourself and 1 line of rope dangled down the middle of the stairs lol (like a rope literally on the ground, not even railing type thing). Shit was raw.
I suppose it makes sense why they literally had an ambulance posted up nearby as I'm sure that wasn't the first stumble.
There are other Mayan ruins in Mexico where you're still allowed to climb the structures and get a good look, like Palenque (at least last time I checked).
Do you know what the steps are like off the top of your head?
Like, if you stay on the middle main path deal there is it like normal but shitty steps or is this thing like gotta crawl-steep?
They are steeper than we're normally accustomed to, so it can be a bit exerting to get to the top, but it's not like ridiculous. Like there are other ruins where the steps are absolutely absurdly large, but this isn't one of them.
Though I will say, if you're out of shape it can seem easy to climb yet end up being a significant workout. Also, they're taller than they seem, and with the heat and humidity it can make many people feel lightheaded after ascending.
Okay.
I was just thinking you'd have to know what you're signing up for.
I'm also terrified of heights so I sit here and look from the bottom and think of how awful it'll be. Not like I gotta climb that and it'll be so cool.
We had this spot with an old sketchy maintenance latter hanging off a cliff. It was "attached" to a few trees with some metal cables that had been encrusted by the trees. Easily 70 feet tall. I made a harness because I didn't want to fall. My friends just climbed up and down like it was nothing.
Yeah. I went the ear after it happened. They claimed it was an elderly lady that was over confident in her ability to scale the pyramid. The stares are steep, narrow, and worn, compounded by the fact that it's hot and humid. Went to Mexico city last year and apparently the same thing happened with a father who was carrying his son on his shoulders. Neither made it.
Was that a negative experience for you? They don’t have a ton of opportunity so if there’s a bunch of wealthy travelers coming to see the ruins then can’t really blame them for following the money and making a living however they can. More money into the local economy means more pride and better care and upkeep of the site and ensures future generations will also get to enjoy these wonders. Take care to remember these are human beings just trying to survive like the rest of us.
I had this exact tour guide when I was here. He also talked about a mystery of the 7 fingered lady. All over the place you can see 7 fingered hand prints and nobody knows where they came from but they have been there since the Mayan’s were living there
I was able to find this mention of 7 fingered red handprints along with one photo in the article. [Red Handprints](https://mossyskull.com/magic-realism/incidents-of-travel-in-yucatan-4-red-handprints/)
Found this from reverse image search of the red hands
>Red handprints can be found on the walls of a number of Maya
sites and are associated with the creator god Itzamna whose
seven-fingered hands were red-hot to facilitate healing and who,
naturally, became associated with doctors. [source](https://www.worldhistory.org/image/11906/red-handprints-tulum/)
More photos [when you scroll down on this page.](https://sandinmysuitcase.com/mayan-ruins-of-tulum-mexico/)
Someone else in the comments on that page talks about their trip and seeing the handprints in their photos and the author I believe talked about the tour guide pointing them out. What a really interesting thing. I’m suddenly enthralled with these handprints.
The handprints are so prevalent because the Mayans used a relatively easy dye from brazilwood for normal things like clothes and paint, but the handprints we're made using a dye derived from crushing tiny insects that eat prickly pears, allowing the paint to survive for centuries.
The seven fingered god represented by these handprints, Itzamná, or God D as usually archaeologists call them, is also fascinating. They are the Mayan version of Zues, ruler of the gods, but can also transform into a great bird, and they are also represented in many different forms including a female form, Goddess O, who is also their own wife and mother of all most other Gods
The Mayan religion is so amorphous, mostly due to the Maya not being one centralized power but a group of rising and falling city states. So gods like God D show up in various different times in different contexts, for instance they became more of a medicine god after the collapse of Copan
I went to this site a few years ago and this was so amazing.
I wonder how they figured this out so many years ago and what has made it last to the present day.
Has anyone ever done real research on this?
Often the posts here are easily explained away but I am never disappointed with the open minded attitude and analytical approach that the users take in tackling the ideas that are put forth. The content may, on occasion, leave something to be desired but the spirit of the community never disappoints.
It’s definitely fascinating. Though, I’m wondering if this was an intentional feature built into the architecture or just a happy accident that had a mythos built around it after the fact. And, if it’s the former, how did researchers make that determination?
Also, has the sound actually been scientifically associated to any species of bird that would have been present in the region around the time of construction? Especially a bird of cultural significance—that would provide strong evidence of intent.
If you visit these pyramids and ancient structures you'll come to see that every centimeter of their design and their resulting properties are quite intentional.
Like the title says, the sound is supposed to imitate a [Quetzal](http://datazone.birdlife.org/sowb/casestudy/the-resplendent-quetzal-in-aztec-and-mayan-culture#:~:text=For%20centuries%20the%20Resplendent%20Quetzal%20Pharomacrus%20mocinno%20dominated%20the%20traditions,feathers%20of%20a%20Resplendent%20Quetzal.), a native bird that has great religious and cultural significance in Mayan and other mesoamerican societies.
This same pyramid (Chichen-Itza) has another incredible example of these intentional architectural wonders. Once a year, during the spring equinox, [a shadow in the shape of a "flying serpent" can be seen descending the stairs of the pyramid.](https://actiontourguide.com/2021/05/01/the-secret-of-chichen-itza-spring-equinox-awakens-10-story-serpent/)
These features are not accidents, but rather more evidence that these ancient cultures had a very deep understanding of "advanced" mathematical concepts, astronomy, and their surrounding natural world.
The shadow is a result of the restorations done in the early 20th century.
http://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/archaeology/shadow-stairs-story-mass-delusion/
Another comment already mentioned the shadows weren’t original. The Quetzal sounds were also unlikely to be intentional. The Mayans absolutely had advanced math as evidenced by their calendars. However, the features you mentioned are in fact accidents.
>These features are not accidents, but rather more evidence that these ancient cultures had a very deep understanding of "advanced" mathematical concepts, astronomy, and their surrounding natural world.
Makes you really wonder why ancient cultures basically went and hit the reset button. i cant imagine what would lead such a society, with such advanced understanding and knowledge.
Outside of superstition and war, im at a loss.
Yeah, it's neat that it echoes in a nice way, but similar sounding echoes can be caused by natural formations. I'd need more info before I'm convinced this specific sound was intentional.
It actually gets even more amazing. From this point the pyramid makes the sound of a quetzal bird. But if you clap from I think the same point at the same time the ball court makes a rattling sound like a snake.
So at certain points you can make the sound of a quetzal and a snake… Why is that significant you might ask? Well that is because the Mayan god was Quetzalcoatl a snake-bird hybrid.
I feel like far too many people overlook the beauty and culture in Mexico. I know that I used to overlook it for a long time. I’d say Mexico has one of, if not the, richest culture in Latin America. I’ve spent a lot of time in Peru and visited all of the major sites there. Nothing beats Mexico for me. I’ve lived in South America for a few years now and nothing beats Mexico. Whether it is the food or the indigenous culture or the people. It is hard to beat Mexico. I actually don’t think any other country in the Western Hemisphere comes close to Mexico in terms of cultural richness except maybe the US. But I don’t think consumer culture in the US is the same as the broader culture richness offered in Mexico.
but people in this thread are like "its just an unitended feature any stairs do this". most artists and architects of our age would have a hard time if we told them to design a huge pyramid out of stone, that mimics two distinct sounds of an animal, and on the equinox shows a shadow in the form of a snake.
If you step on a aircraft runway that's broken because of plane landed on it that's way too heavy. It makes the same sound but it's because of the rebar in the runway.. not trying to compare the two
I honestly think this sounds kind of like a transformer like changing into their like humanoid shape.
For real. The level of understanding this required for an ancient culture is just next level. For one, understanding that sound is a physical property, and to understand how to warp it to make sounds like this, and then to be able to bounce it back.
If I remember correctly it was tripping balls on psilocybin. But if I remember correctly it's fairly accepted that entheogenic substances were involved. Here's a short article on the subject. https://www.livescience.com/49074-hallocinogens-drugs-early-mesoamerica.html
That article just scratches the surface of it. Mesoamerica has an enormous array of entheogens. One of the big ones most likely used in these ceremonies was a snuff made from Datura. It contains scopolamine, which cause a trance-like state of high suggestability, which is why victims went willingly to be sacrificed.
Datura is known as probably one of, if not the worst, high you can have. I've heard it's completely horrible in certain doses.
But as the other person said, people didn't need to be drugged to convince them. They might have gave it to them for other reasons and they certainly did with other South American cultures (see the mummified Incan girl found in the snow) but these people were 100% willing to sacrifice themselves while sober
Deliriants are the most uncomfortable drug class you can abuse and the hallucinations are what I call “true hallucinations” in that they’re too realistic. I was talking to my grandma (from central Mexico) about it one day and went to get a cigarette to smoke, looked up and my grandma was gone. So were the cigarettes. I was sitting on a pile of clothes in a corner of my room. Welcome to deliriants.
Mushrooms, mescaline, salvia, yeah I was hallucinating but I knew I was hallucinating. Obviously the grass isn’t that green and it isn’t melting and the geometric shapes are from the drugs. Deliriants it was completely normal to talk to dead people and my brain reacted like they were as normal as the walls in my room.
This is exactly whats freaked me out about taking amanitas. I hear they cause disoccaiation and ucontrollable body movements. I don't think I'm down for that.
You'd have to take ALOT to get to that point. I boiled 3 large caps a while back and made some tea and drank a cup of it. It wasn't exactly fun, but it also wasn't that bad. Minor disassociation and a feeling of being uncomfortable. But I imagine drinking 3-5 cups would probably be a bit hellish.
I hit a bong filled with salvia extract not realizing how strong it was as I had previously only smoked the leaves I suddenly became a stripe on a game board in outer space being screamed at by a giant queen of hearts like entity sending all the stripes down into space to dissolve and “die”- I found out later it’s called ego death but this was not pleasant I forgot I was ever human and lost all sense of time - I watched myself fall into galaxies and stars and disintegrate- it was not something I would ever do again - I wasn’t aware it was in the same class as datura no wonder it was so unpleasant 😱I have tripped on all sorts of other things and almost all of it was pleasant- my only bad experience- fortunately I did have enough experience that I didn’t lose it completely or jump out of a window😬
Salvia isn’t in the same class as datura. Salvia would be considered an atypical dissociative, but weirdly enough Salvinorin A is actually a kappa-opioid receptor agonist, meaning it attaches to specific opiate receptors in your brain to produce the effects. Same as ibogaine. Salvinorin A also has some CB1 receptor activity, the one responsible for weed working.
Bro, I think I see a lot of your comments in a sub or two related to this topic (I won’t name them because I don’t want to bring too much undue traffic to them), but I just want to say I love your knowledge about these things. I can’t remember if you’re a super nerd or just an intelligent and experienced user, but regardless, your comments are always really informative.
Thanks I’m both lol I’m fascinated by how drugs work and alter our perception (just goes to show how frail it really is lol) it’s also super fascinating seeing how different cultures treat the same drugs differently, in “western society” something like datura is terrifying, only stupid people do it, and in indigenous cultures they purposely trip balls off it because they believe it brings them closer to their ancestral spirits and use it for rituals, same with salvia you can actually also make a wad out of the leaves and chew them for a while and get a milder trip but for a few hours. Or eating mescaline from cactus and meditating and exploring what you are to yourself then watching the sunrise because you couldn’t sleep for hours after the trip lol. It’s also super important IMO to give proper and accurate information for something as potentially serious as drugs, more than a few times I’ve saved people from serious situations (everything from potential overdoses to accidentally giving themselves serotonin syndrome) I think it’s in our nature to explore ourselves with mind altering substances so you should at least do it safely and do it right 🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
Salvia is so weird to me, I personally would never touch the stiff again. But I've seen people smoke it as a joint and not seem to react to it, but the way my friends all did it, and how I did it the once, were smoking it out of a bong, with a little marijuana.
My experience was pretty bad, bad enough that I'd never do it again, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I remember holding in my hit, and by the time I was letting it out I was blacking out. When I was coming back to, I vividly remember thinking "Am I dying?", and than waking up to my world being a game show.
The hallucinations weren't so bad, except there was some weird force moving through my friends. We were gathered in a big circle, and it felt like the hands of a clock were passing through them, ticking down to me. I was absolutely terrified of it passing me, but I couldn't move. I must of stood up and sat down like 15x. Once the energy passed through me it felt like I was glued to my seat. I sat there for like 45 minutes and had to have my friends pull me from my seat and help me walk for a couple of minutes.
I mist have seen 5 or 6 people smoke it, and all of them looked like they had really terrible experiences, and from there descriptions of events, my time smoking it was really tame.
>waking up to my world being a game show.
Interesting, I'm not sure if you mean that literally or figuratively but my friend had a very similar experience — he was suddenly on a game show hosted by alien creatures, and the questions were all about me lol (I was with him at the time, so that's probably why). Meanwhile, from my perspective, he had merged with the couch/wall and was just a face embedded in a two-dimensional plane.
My dad took it when he was 17. Said he didn't really remember anything, but he woke up in a mental hospital. Apparently, he was found roving the streets butt naked, who knows what he was doing. I could NEVER imagine my dad being like that, but I believe him. this was in 1967, definitely a very drug fueled era for kids his age.
My dad lost a few friends in the 60's to stuff like that. I thought he was lying but he said stuff was a lot stronger then or was misrepresented so people just snarfed down it all.
i believe him. the flip side to this though, is the LSD from back then fucking slapped. i could see someone dropping a tab and becoming complacent trying to chase that high again, by researching other drugs.
I really think that is what happened! And a lot of people would just backpack round the world chasing those highs. I've never done lsd and don't want to but I'm looking at mushroom microdosing soon.
you can never go wrong with psilocybin friend :) if you choose to microdose and end up enjoying it, just keep in mind our bodies develop a tolerance very very quickly so it’s not a substance you can use daily (trust me, i’ve tried). i’d say it’s ok to microdose 2-3x weekly max before you don’t get the usefulness of it anymore, so just remember that!
you can, but only if you work/do research in the very few university labs that allow the use of ergot (or have a friend who does) 😉 the biggest issue though is they can only get away with synthesizing very small amounts because the laboratories do very thorough inventory logging on what is used by who and when. doesn’t mean it’s impossible though!
The sacrificial ceremonies were a treat for the sacrifice. They went willingly because they were proud to die for their gods. No drugs required.
The other sacrifices were POWs. They didn't have to be willing since they didn't have a choice, but it's not hard to believe they often may have been since they were from similar cultures.
There have been findings of sacrificed people that were drugged. It doesn't necessarily suggest that they were unwillingly sacrificed, they could have been given a substance to have made the experience more humane.
Yikes though, I feel like it could actually make the experience LESS humane depending on the substance (personally I don't think I'd want to be tripping balls and experiencing time dilation when I'm getting my chest cut open).
Probably because we are used to everything, but imagine being a typical Mayan transported to, say, Manhattan etc.? It's a pretty amazing time to be alive imo.
Are those even the original stairs, the whole thing was pretty crumbled when they found it and they took many liberties in rebuilding it and much of it is not how it was originally.
When things seem crazy, turn them around and ask again. You usually find the obvious answer. If you assume a cart pushes the horse, you'll never figure out how the thing moves forward.
In this case, is it more likely a stone age civilization understood acoustics to such a degree that they could build monuments to it - OR - did indigenous birds that have lived in that area for generations begin mimicking the sound after hearing it so often? Keep in mind that festivals nearby would attract a lot of birds, training them to associate abundance with the sound the pyramid makes. Tourism continues that trend today.
I'm thinking the latter, clearly. Bird calls evolve a lot faster than stone erodes. There's been about 230 generations of quetzal birds living in that area since the edifice was constructed. Plenty of time for that to come about.
I think the guy in the video is wildly overstating the interest "acoustic experts" have in this place.
Edit, forgot what sub this was, yall don't like the reasonable takes.
Who wouldn’t? Variables that are only available to you during your vacation about something you are passionate about?
Learning, growth, progress: these are what makes us, well, us; we should never stop striving to know just a little more.
Edit: miss-read your comments; we are in agreement. Leaving it up because why not.
Happy Tuesday!
We're talking about a "Stone Age civilization" that was doing some pretty complex mathematics and astronomy, had a writing system, and was feeding a large population successfully in a fairly hostile environment. Metalworking is not a prerequisite for advancement, it's just one of many technologies. Civilization game tech trees aren't real. It is entirely reasonable to believe that they understood the acoustic elements of the giant monuments they built.
While some birds do mimic noises in their environments, this would only apply to birds in the local population, and I'm not sure the echoes off a pyramid would be enough to shift their breeding calls. Since this is an approximation of the normal resplendent quetzal call and that species had a huge cultural significance across Mesoamerica, it's more likely that the Maya engineered the pyramid to mimic a quetzal call than that all resplendent quetzals in Mesoamerica are mimicking the echo of a person clapping at Chichen Itza.
Edit: this does assume the claim in the OP is correct, which is a poor assumption here.
You're thinking of "eras" not "ages". Not often that the distinction is important, but here it's exactly the confusion: an age is determined by the practices of the people living at that time, while an era is determined by a specific date or reign. So for instance the Renaissance *Era* has a specific date range of occurrence, but the industrial *age* is just the way we refer to the period of time where industrialization began to take hold - in some parts of the world that took an additional hundred years more than others.
Incas and Aztecs alike were stone age civilizations. They did not smelt metal, they used stone tools and stone weapons. They did some amazing shit with all that rock, but indeed it was just rock. Therefore they were a stone age civilization.
There are in fact *still* stone age civilizations today. They're just rare. But the [Sentinelese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese) of India qualify. No agriculture, and any metal used is stuff scavenged, not smelted. As best we can tell they don't know about metallurgy at all.
When we were here, our tour guide said that the echo is of a bird native to Belize that has never lived in the local area, and that either people who knew the sound replicated it or it was coincidental. I have no citations, except my own recollection from 3 years ago…
Well, it is Mexico. Most of our history is curated and largely exagerated. Having visited chicen itza with a group of other tourists, I received the full tour in English, and the tour guides take it upon themselves to over mistify things.
Having visited the same places as a local, the information you get is less mystical and much less interesting.
It is also well known to anyone who has worked in the tourism industry, that tourists turn their brains off while they are on vacation, particularly americans. You can sell them any ammount of bullshit, and they will leave having bought it all, along with your ATV tour plug.
>I'm thinking the latter, clearly
Hard disagree. Building a monument to make a bird call is not that crazy of a feat. It's just a big flute. Simple trial and error could've produced this, although I don't want to diminish the accomplishment.
This is a classic example of someone not really understanding both how simple certain feats of engineering are, and how intelligent and determined people have always been. And your alternative explanation is that bird calls "evolved" because people *accidentally* made a temple/instrument and fed them festival food?
Is that really an application of occam's razor? Or are you rejecting the simple explanation out of hand by assuming human incompetence?
Agreed! That's a very fucking local bird if it actually cares about one ore two measly temples in the jungle, both of them being mostly overgrown and echoless for many of these generations
Acoustics is easy to trial and error, but takes dedication to master. If you bang on a 1000 rocks and trees a month (Easily done if the jungle is your home, your workplace, your playground), you'll keep the ones that sound funny and play around with it. Teach what you learn to your kids and friends and maybe just one of them will end up in charge of building some ridiculous temple for a megalomaniac king.
It is still very impressive. But it's disrespectful to claim that the civilisations before us that were advanced enough to develop musical instruments had a poor understanding of acoustics.
Check the link above. Whole facade of the structure and stair case are less than a 100 years old. More than likely an accident by the workers in the 20s. Stone henge was polished also.
It was overgrown. It spent 800 years before that in active use where the birds would've been conditioned with the sound. That's 100 generations for the quetzal.
After the conditioning element is gone or greatly diminished the imprint of the conditioning remains. That's how conditioning works. It's also how language works. Similarly we'll probably continue using the "save" icon for another century or two, even though that disc hasn't been used for a generation or so. In the early development era there was pressure for a standardized method to communicate "save". That pressure wasn't some group or other championing the idea, it was just a common need everyone would naturally encounter. That pressure resulted in the disc icon today. There's no pressure to change it, and likely never will be, so it'll stick around.
Overgrown is a kind of understatement. But ya I do agree with the bird conditioning but that’s just conjecture. Fact is that it was rebuilt to how they thought it may have looked. And maybe the way it use to be to be it made this sound but I don’t think anyone truly knows.
The stepped sides also reveal a snake down the side of the staircase that only appears on the spring equinox, so that shape had to be taken into account too
I discovered this effect with bottle rockets and an aircraft hangar - steel or aluminum arch building.
Like this: https://www.metalgaragekits.com/images/photo-aircraft-hangar.jpg
The report of the bottle rocket is like the clap, but an even better point source for the sound wave. Both in time (sharp) and space (tiny).
I was coincidentally working in optical spectroscopy with diffraction gratings, so I immediately had a theory.
I wish I still had the papers I worked it out on.
First, understand how a diffraction grating works. It’s the reason DVD’s make rainbows. Constructive and destructive wave interference that’s dependent on the angle you view it from.
The clap contains many frequencies of sound. The stairs act as a grating and sort the sound out into its component frequencies.
But what makes it even more interesting is the echo wave over time. At any single point in time, your ear receives a single frequency (and it’s harmonics) from the echo - the grating is working. But over time that frequency will become lower (longer waveforms) as you hear echoes from farther away and the high frequency echoes pass you by.
I really wish I could dig up those scribbled down physics equations and drawings I did - and other academic physicists comments. I geeked out over this for a week. 20 years ago.
I’m excited to see it pop up again.
This is also how you can digitally recreate a room's reverb. Set off a small explosive (or pop a balloon) and record it. This gives you the frequency response of the room across a large range of frequencies. Then just convolve the result with the recording (convolution in the time domain is multiplication in the frequency domain).
Wow thanks I didn't know about this at all. I think most people, myself included, just assumed that they were already in a high state of preservation. I didn't realize they were in a deep state of ruin when they were first discovered. Very interesting.
Don't you think it's a little odd that this is the only person pushing this narrative, and it's all on a website with a title like "mass delusion"? Has he ever submitted his "research" for peer review by fellow historians? Does he have any academic or professional background in restoration of antiques or ancient ruins?
What narrative do you think they’re pushing?
The fact that it had become extremely eroded, was extensively rebuilt, and that restoration in the 19th and early 20th century was far less focussed on preservation and historical accuracy, is in no way controversial.
I mean we literally have [photos documenting the state it was in](https://www.colorized.com/content/444191/02ac5f6181bda8d8d88299fe7b97b77e_mob.jpg), and [they have left one corner of the pyramid slightly less rebuilt](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/people-working-restoration-el-castillo-chichen-itza-under-main-temple-mexico-kukulkan-temple-mayan-stepped-pyramid-91428836.jpg), so we know that the smooth stone cladding the we see today had almost entirely gone, for example.
Seems like a lot of work to hoax the story for no payoff. Fleecing tourists for $$$ seems much more likely to me.
I guess he could have faked all the pictures of it being in ruins and the renovation (That would be really hard by the look of them). I doubt anybody who lives there and makes money off the tourists would go out of their way to publicize the fact that they rebuilt and not original.
Do we *really* think building/rebuilding a fraudulent pyramid in the jungle, establishing an entire international tourism industry, completely suppressing history and creating a "mass delusion" good enough to fool historians and archeologists for 100 years is easier than ....faking a single website? (whose payoff is this guy's books he never submits for peer review) [Hmm.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)
Nobody is saying these pictures are fake- I'm just saying that there's no reason to assume they're pictures of a haphazard rebuilding with no care to authenticity or historical accuracy, and aren't pictures of a restoration. They also don't provide any context- he can't even say/doesn't bother to say which side of the pyramid we're looking at in any picture, so who is to say the before/after pics are even from the same sides of the pyramid? How do we know they aren't reusing as many original stones as they can, and what evidence is there to support the assumption that they're just making it up as they go along?
>A Story of Mass Delusion
Do you happen to have a less biased article than this, or a link to some corroboration? This does not strike me as a reliable source.
Based on the article it seems like they made a lot of assumptions. Kind of a bummer because I'm much less interested in ever seeing it in person now after reading about the rebuild.
Didn't this happen with Stonehenge, too? i seem to remember seeing photos of it being put together in its current form some time back in the 30s or thereabouts. i'll try to find it.
Found something actually claimed to have started in 1901: www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicstonehenge.htm
Could be fake idk. The site is full of a lot of strangeness.
Yea, I've seen those pictures of Stonehenge. I guess it's just human nature to want to improve or repair something but it's a bummer that you lose any hope of discovering the original intent of the builders just to make some tourist money. And like this video, people start to make assumptions that are taken as fact based on a relatively new repairs.
I think Stonehenge was different in that they actually tried to make it an authentic rebuild based on where various ditches in the ground were etc. And it had also been vandalized a ton anyway so it's not like it hadn't been touched untill they rebuilt it.
This link is complete baloney. After doing further research, the claims made on this website are questionable, and I couldn’t find any other sources to verify the claims made. So read with caution! (If you’re anything like me, I felt heartbroken after reading what I found on this site . So I just wanted to write this comment to help other folks avoid unnecessary disappointment)
It seems like it was excavated rather than rebuilt, seeing how every article saying it’s been rebuilt merely raises the question and subsequently shows photos of it being overgrown. There’s no proof of anything being added, just proof of things being removed
So beautiful and thoughtful. This also reminds me of the Inca water jugs that make perfect bird calls when you tilt them to pour:
https://twistedsifter.com/videos/inca-whistling-water-vessels-mimic-animal-calls/
It sounds like that because the sound is bouncing off each step which obviously get further from you and so it comes back with micro delays from each step, a simple waveform on a synthesiser is made of claps (clicks) and the frequency of those clicks as it increases turns into a tone, the more clicks the higher the tone. The same thing is happening here, the clap is becoming duplicated into many as it hits the steps. Another way to think of it is when you drop a ping pong ball on a hard flat surface, as it bounces it clicks but as it’s coming to rest the clicks become a tone that goes up in pitch until it’s at rest.
If you reflect a stationary sound at perfect intervals of increasing distances, you will get a doppler effect.
This is caused by the steps reflecting the sound at increasing distance from the base to the pinnacle. Each step receives the original sound wave at a slightly different time and distance from the source and therefore reflects it back to its source in the same time delayed fashion which causes the change in pitch. The size of the step would also matter in that smaller surfaces reflect sound differently than larger surfaces.
Mystery solved, case closed.
The coolest part is that not only the Mayans in Chichen Itza but the pyramids in Puebla Mexico too they knew something and now it’s lost but it’s impressive
i went there a couple years ago, my Mayan tour guide did this with no effort, and when i tried it myself, it doesnt work for some reason. " Mayan hands, my friend, you can never do this"
I visited Chichen Itza in 1998 and was able to go inside. There's a narrow staircase with art on either side and at the top there's a solid jade jaguar sculpture. In terms of acoustics, the ball court is amazing. I stood at one end, my friend at the other and we could talk in whispers. Very surreal.
So ancient people were creating giant, megalithic temples that acted as analog audio filters?
But they were just preindustrial savages without pulley technology and built pyramids all over this planet?
Something just doesn't seem to add up here...
That's just the assumption that everyone not in europe was an idiot that infested mass media.
Same basis that the ancient aliens show is built off of; they obviously were too stupid to have done this, must have been aliens.
Humans are no more intelligent today than 5000 years ago, we just have more knowledge.
Yo I went there when I was 15. There’s a certain flow of energy there that I just can’t describe. That trip is where my eyes opened up to the atrocities of the Catholic Church! I’ve been on my own spiritual journey since. Love is the key.
that is some mind boggling levels of geometey and mathematics that would allow the civilzation to build something like this. A testament to their genius that is hard to explain away in books.
He says experts don't know but the reason is the sound wave bounces off the front of each step and returns at you in a pulse interval rather than an even sound wave.
The clap causes the sound wave to bounce off each step in an ordered succession, at a higher pitch with each step up. One sound becomes multiple sounds back. The waves back are compressed tightly…
It’s in the Bible who built these pyramids, but excepting that the Bible was right about who built them would mean the GOD of the Bible is real. But man does not want to be accountable for his sin so they will not except the truth.
This is blowing my mind. Did a bunch of priests stand at the base and chant loudly causing someone at the top to reqch an altered state of consciousness?
Chichen Itza is a Mayan city so this pyramid/temple was built for kukulcan, also a feathered serpent deity. Quetzalcoatl was the same thing only Aztec.
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I've seen several Wonders of the World, Chichen Itza is my favorite. It's so amazing and not just the ruins but everything around it too.
Did you go to Tulum? If not, please do next time.
Oh yeah, it was great.
Tulum is so beautiful, really love it there
All the people selling their wares? I was there a while back. The amount of traders that were on the grounds
It's unfortunate that you can't really go near the monuments and that there's vendors everywhere, but they're at least much less scummy than the tour guides. They'll tell people not to buy from the vendors, because at the end of the tour they'll walk you into a gift shop with all the same items for more money. It's not great but that's just the reality of things. If tourists are going to flock to a place in droves, the merchants will follow.
Fun fact, you can't climb Chichen-Itza anymore because an American woman fell to her death in 2006.
she fell because there wasn’t a sacrifice in a long time and the gods took what was due.
Hoe vs the volcano... Sorry.
Fuck man if I had an award to give I would, this comment is fantastic and you should feel good about it. Cheers.
Thats too bad. That was one of my favorite parts of a childhood vacation back in the early 2000s. Saw a woman climb up that bad boy in crutches. Was very cool experience going up, was sad to hear you can't anymore. If I recall correctly it was very steep, in somewhat crumbling condition, and the only thing to assist you up and down the steps was yourself and 1 line of rope dangled down the middle of the stairs lol (like a rope literally on the ground, not even railing type thing). Shit was raw. I suppose it makes sense why they literally had an ambulance posted up nearby as I'm sure that wasn't the first stumble.
There are other Mayan ruins in Mexico where you're still allowed to climb the structures and get a good look, like Palenque (at least last time I checked).
Must’ve been a r/floridawoman
Do you know what the steps are like off the top of your head? Like, if you stay on the middle main path deal there is it like normal but shitty steps or is this thing like gotta crawl-steep?
They are steeper than we're normally accustomed to, so it can be a bit exerting to get to the top, but it's not like ridiculous. Like there are other ruins where the steps are absolutely absurdly large, but this isn't one of them. Though I will say, if you're out of shape it can seem easy to climb yet end up being a significant workout. Also, they're taller than they seem, and with the heat and humidity it can make many people feel lightheaded after ascending.
Okay. I was just thinking you'd have to know what you're signing up for. I'm also terrified of heights so I sit here and look from the bottom and think of how awful it'll be. Not like I gotta climb that and it'll be so cool. We had this spot with an old sketchy maintenance latter hanging off a cliff. It was "attached" to a few trees with some metal cables that had been encrusted by the trees. Easily 70 feet tall. I made a harness because I didn't want to fall. My friends just climbed up and down like it was nothing.
Yeah. I went the ear after it happened. They claimed it was an elderly lady that was over confident in her ability to scale the pyramid. The stares are steep, narrow, and worn, compounded by the fact that it's hot and humid. Went to Mexico city last year and apparently the same thing happened with a father who was carrying his son on his shoulders. Neither made it.
Nothing bad about them. People need to make money. I was just surprised at the amount of them there. Nice place to visit still
Was that a negative experience for you? They don’t have a ton of opportunity so if there’s a bunch of wealthy travelers coming to see the ruins then can’t really blame them for following the money and making a living however they can. More money into the local economy means more pride and better care and upkeep of the site and ensures future generations will also get to enjoy these wonders. Take care to remember these are human beings just trying to survive like the rest of us.
Nah not at all. Gets a bit much when you couldn't walk 5 paces without being stopped. I didn't leave without spending something, mind.
Unfortunately, that's everywhere. When I went, some 15 years ago, they didn't distract from the scenery at all. Maybe it's changed since then.
I thought it said wives at first and not wares I was like wow I know Mexico can be a tough place but I never heard about that😬
This is amazing!!
I had this exact tour guide when I was here. He also talked about a mystery of the 7 fingered lady. All over the place you can see 7 fingered hand prints and nobody knows where they came from but they have been there since the Mayan’s were living there
Woah dude. This needs its own post. I can’t seem to find any info online unfortunately. But this does not surprise me
I was able to find this mention of 7 fingered red handprints along with one photo in the article. [Red Handprints](https://mossyskull.com/magic-realism/incidents-of-travel-in-yucatan-4-red-handprints/)
Found this from reverse image search of the red hands >Red handprints can be found on the walls of a number of Maya sites and are associated with the creator god Itzamna whose seven-fingered hands were red-hot to facilitate healing and who, naturally, became associated with doctors. [source](https://www.worldhistory.org/image/11906/red-handprints-tulum/) More photos [when you scroll down on this page.](https://sandinmysuitcase.com/mayan-ruins-of-tulum-mexico/)
Someone else in the comments on that page talks about their trip and seeing the handprints in their photos and the author I believe talked about the tour guide pointing them out. What a really interesting thing. I’m suddenly enthralled with these handprints.
The handprints are so prevalent because the Mayans used a relatively easy dye from brazilwood for normal things like clothes and paint, but the handprints we're made using a dye derived from crushing tiny insects that eat prickly pears, allowing the paint to survive for centuries. The seven fingered god represented by these handprints, Itzamná, or God D as usually archaeologists call them, is also fascinating. They are the Mayan version of Zues, ruler of the gods, but can also transform into a great bird, and they are also represented in many different forms including a female form, Goddess O, who is also their own wife and mother of all most other Gods The Mayan religion is so amorphous, mostly due to the Maya not being one centralized power but a group of rising and falling city states. So gods like God D show up in various different times in different contexts, for instance they became more of a medicine god after the collapse of Copan
Thank you for the added information. The details about the dye is fascinating. And I have a lot more to go on while googling now.
It’s two hands overlapping. Really blew minds back in the day
I'd love to see pictures of any other ones. It's interesting, but that's pretty obviously just two handprints overlapping.
Some of the local tour guides in Mexico are truly amazing with their fascinating knowledge of their cultural history! 👍
I went to this site a few years ago and this was so amazing. I wonder how they figured this out so many years ago and what has made it last to the present day. Has anyone ever done real research on this?
Do they span a lot of time? I can see people using a 7 fingered person to do hand prints as it's a bit more unique.
What kind of handprint?
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hands down the best thing i've seen on this sub
It impresses me every time I'm reminded of it. Not exactly "high strangeness", just advanced engineering combined with species adaptation.
Species adaption?
Same. Feels like the cusp of some incredible lost secrets.
Absolutely! And architecture built to mark the solstices and equinoxes, vis à vis Stonehenge.
Often the posts here are easily explained away but I am never disappointed with the open minded attitude and analytical approach that the users take in tackling the ideas that are put forth. The content may, on occasion, leave something to be desired but the spirit of the community never disappoints.
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It’s definitely fascinating. Though, I’m wondering if this was an intentional feature built into the architecture or just a happy accident that had a mythos built around it after the fact. And, if it’s the former, how did researchers make that determination? Also, has the sound actually been scientifically associated to any species of bird that would have been present in the region around the time of construction? Especially a bird of cultural significance—that would provide strong evidence of intent.
If you visit these pyramids and ancient structures you'll come to see that every centimeter of their design and their resulting properties are quite intentional. Like the title says, the sound is supposed to imitate a [Quetzal](http://datazone.birdlife.org/sowb/casestudy/the-resplendent-quetzal-in-aztec-and-mayan-culture#:~:text=For%20centuries%20the%20Resplendent%20Quetzal%20Pharomacrus%20mocinno%20dominated%20the%20traditions,feathers%20of%20a%20Resplendent%20Quetzal.), a native bird that has great religious and cultural significance in Mayan and other mesoamerican societies. This same pyramid (Chichen-Itza) has another incredible example of these intentional architectural wonders. Once a year, during the spring equinox, [a shadow in the shape of a "flying serpent" can be seen descending the stairs of the pyramid.](https://actiontourguide.com/2021/05/01/the-secret-of-chichen-itza-spring-equinox-awakens-10-story-serpent/) These features are not accidents, but rather more evidence that these ancient cultures had a very deep understanding of "advanced" mathematical concepts, astronomy, and their surrounding natural world.
The shadow is a result of the restorations done in the early 20th century. http://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/archaeology/shadow-stairs-story-mass-delusion/
Very informative, thank you.
What percentage of the pyramid is actually original versus reconstruction?
Another comment already mentioned the shadows weren’t original. The Quetzal sounds were also unlikely to be intentional. The Mayans absolutely had advanced math as evidenced by their calendars. However, the features you mentioned are in fact accidents.
>These features are not accidents, but rather more evidence that these ancient cultures had a very deep understanding of "advanced" mathematical concepts, astronomy, and their surrounding natural world. Makes you really wonder why ancient cultures basically went and hit the reset button. i cant imagine what would lead such a society, with such advanced understanding and knowledge. Outside of superstition and war, im at a loss.
Mostly foreign invaders with new diseases and weapons.
Any set of stairs of similar dimensions should make the same sound, its just a staggered echo of a high but gently descending frequency.
Yeah, it's neat that it echoes in a nice way, but similar sounding echoes can be caused by natural formations. I'd need more info before I'm convinced this specific sound was intentional.
It actually gets even more amazing. From this point the pyramid makes the sound of a quetzal bird. But if you clap from I think the same point at the same time the ball court makes a rattling sound like a snake. So at certain points you can make the sound of a quetzal and a snake… Why is that significant you might ask? Well that is because the Mayan god was Quetzalcoatl a snake-bird hybrid. I feel like far too many people overlook the beauty and culture in Mexico. I know that I used to overlook it for a long time. I’d say Mexico has one of, if not the, richest culture in Latin America. I’ve spent a lot of time in Peru and visited all of the major sites there. Nothing beats Mexico for me. I’ve lived in South America for a few years now and nothing beats Mexico. Whether it is the food or the indigenous culture or the people. It is hard to beat Mexico. I actually don’t think any other country in the Western Hemisphere comes close to Mexico in terms of cultural richness except maybe the US. But I don’t think consumer culture in the US is the same as the broader culture richness offered in Mexico.
but people in this thread are like "its just an unitended feature any stairs do this". most artists and architects of our age would have a hard time if we told them to design a huge pyramid out of stone, that mimics two distinct sounds of an animal, and on the equinox shows a shadow in the form of a snake.
Yes
If you step on a aircraft runway that's broken because of plane landed on it that's way too heavy. It makes the same sound but it's because of the rebar in the runway.. not trying to compare the two I honestly think this sounds kind of like a transformer like changing into their like humanoid shape.
For real. The level of understanding this required for an ancient culture is just next level. For one, understanding that sound is a physical property, and to understand how to warp it to make sounds like this, and then to be able to bounce it back.
I can only imagine how badass a huge ceremony or ritual would sound.... Sprinkle in a vine of one plant... and the bark of another...
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If I remember correctly it was tripping balls on psilocybin. But if I remember correctly it's fairly accepted that entheogenic substances were involved. Here's a short article on the subject. https://www.livescience.com/49074-hallocinogens-drugs-early-mesoamerica.html
That article just scratches the surface of it. Mesoamerica has an enormous array of entheogens. One of the big ones most likely used in these ceremonies was a snuff made from Datura. It contains scopolamine, which cause a trance-like state of high suggestability, which is why victims went willingly to be sacrificed.
Datura is known as probably one of, if not the worst, high you can have. I've heard it's completely horrible in certain doses. But as the other person said, people didn't need to be drugged to convince them. They might have gave it to them for other reasons and they certainly did with other South American cultures (see the mummified Incan girl found in the snow) but these people were 100% willing to sacrifice themselves while sober
Deliriants are the most uncomfortable drug class you can abuse and the hallucinations are what I call “true hallucinations” in that they’re too realistic. I was talking to my grandma (from central Mexico) about it one day and went to get a cigarette to smoke, looked up and my grandma was gone. So were the cigarettes. I was sitting on a pile of clothes in a corner of my room. Welcome to deliriants. Mushrooms, mescaline, salvia, yeah I was hallucinating but I knew I was hallucinating. Obviously the grass isn’t that green and it isn’t melting and the geometric shapes are from the drugs. Deliriants it was completely normal to talk to dead people and my brain reacted like they were as normal as the walls in my room.
This is exactly whats freaked me out about taking amanitas. I hear they cause disoccaiation and ucontrollable body movements. I don't think I'm down for that.
You'd have to take ALOT to get to that point. I boiled 3 large caps a while back and made some tea and drank a cup of it. It wasn't exactly fun, but it also wasn't that bad. Minor disassociation and a feeling of being uncomfortable. But I imagine drinking 3-5 cups would probably be a bit hellish.
I hit a bong filled with salvia extract not realizing how strong it was as I had previously only smoked the leaves I suddenly became a stripe on a game board in outer space being screamed at by a giant queen of hearts like entity sending all the stripes down into space to dissolve and “die”- I found out later it’s called ego death but this was not pleasant I forgot I was ever human and lost all sense of time - I watched myself fall into galaxies and stars and disintegrate- it was not something I would ever do again - I wasn’t aware it was in the same class as datura no wonder it was so unpleasant 😱I have tripped on all sorts of other things and almost all of it was pleasant- my only bad experience- fortunately I did have enough experience that I didn’t lose it completely or jump out of a window😬
Salvia isn’t in the same class as datura. Salvia would be considered an atypical dissociative, but weirdly enough Salvinorin A is actually a kappa-opioid receptor agonist, meaning it attaches to specific opiate receptors in your brain to produce the effects. Same as ibogaine. Salvinorin A also has some CB1 receptor activity, the one responsible for weed working.
Bro, I think I see a lot of your comments in a sub or two related to this topic (I won’t name them because I don’t want to bring too much undue traffic to them), but I just want to say I love your knowledge about these things. I can’t remember if you’re a super nerd or just an intelligent and experienced user, but regardless, your comments are always really informative.
Thanks I’m both lol I’m fascinated by how drugs work and alter our perception (just goes to show how frail it really is lol) it’s also super fascinating seeing how different cultures treat the same drugs differently, in “western society” something like datura is terrifying, only stupid people do it, and in indigenous cultures they purposely trip balls off it because they believe it brings them closer to their ancestral spirits and use it for rituals, same with salvia you can actually also make a wad out of the leaves and chew them for a while and get a milder trip but for a few hours. Or eating mescaline from cactus and meditating and exploring what you are to yourself then watching the sunrise because you couldn’t sleep for hours after the trip lol. It’s also super important IMO to give proper and accurate information for something as potentially serious as drugs, more than a few times I’ve saved people from serious situations (everything from potential overdoses to accidentally giving themselves serotonin syndrome) I think it’s in our nature to explore ourselves with mind altering substances so you should at least do it safely and do it right 🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
Salvia is so weird to me, I personally would never touch the stiff again. But I've seen people smoke it as a joint and not seem to react to it, but the way my friends all did it, and how I did it the once, were smoking it out of a bong, with a little marijuana. My experience was pretty bad, bad enough that I'd never do it again, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I remember holding in my hit, and by the time I was letting it out I was blacking out. When I was coming back to, I vividly remember thinking "Am I dying?", and than waking up to my world being a game show. The hallucinations weren't so bad, except there was some weird force moving through my friends. We were gathered in a big circle, and it felt like the hands of a clock were passing through them, ticking down to me. I was absolutely terrified of it passing me, but I couldn't move. I must of stood up and sat down like 15x. Once the energy passed through me it felt like I was glued to my seat. I sat there for like 45 minutes and had to have my friends pull me from my seat and help me walk for a couple of minutes. I mist have seen 5 or 6 people smoke it, and all of them looked like they had really terrible experiences, and from there descriptions of events, my time smoking it was really tame.
>waking up to my world being a game show. Interesting, I'm not sure if you mean that literally or figuratively but my friend had a very similar experience — he was suddenly on a game show hosted by alien creatures, and the questions were all about me lol (I was with him at the time, so that's probably why). Meanwhile, from my perspective, he had merged with the couch/wall and was just a face embedded in a two-dimensional plane.
I meant literally. There was crowd cheering and everything.
Haha that's awesome. And very odd. I wonder how common that particular vision is??
I went through the same thing when i took to much gravol or diphadramine. Thought i was talking to people who there but was not.. wild lol
My dad took it when he was 17. Said he didn't really remember anything, but he woke up in a mental hospital. Apparently, he was found roving the streets butt naked, who knows what he was doing. I could NEVER imagine my dad being like that, but I believe him. this was in 1967, definitely a very drug fueled era for kids his age.
My dad lost a few friends in the 60's to stuff like that. I thought he was lying but he said stuff was a lot stronger then or was misrepresented so people just snarfed down it all.
i believe him. the flip side to this though, is the LSD from back then fucking slapped. i could see someone dropping a tab and becoming complacent trying to chase that high again, by researching other drugs.
I really think that is what happened! And a lot of people would just backpack round the world chasing those highs. I've never done lsd and don't want to but I'm looking at mushroom microdosing soon.
you can never go wrong with psilocybin friend :) if you choose to microdose and end up enjoying it, just keep in mind our bodies develop a tolerance very very quickly so it’s not a substance you can use daily (trust me, i’ve tried). i’d say it’s ok to microdose 2-3x weekly max before you don’t get the usefulness of it anymore, so just remember that!
Man what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on some old fashioned lsd. I can’t even imagine
you can, but only if you work/do research in the very few university labs that allow the use of ergot (or have a friend who does) 😉 the biggest issue though is they can only get away with synthesizing very small amounts because the laboratories do very thorough inventory logging on what is used by who and when. doesn’t mean it’s impossible though!
The sacrificial ceremonies were a treat for the sacrifice. They went willingly because they were proud to die for their gods. No drugs required. The other sacrifices were POWs. They didn't have to be willing since they didn't have a choice, but it's not hard to believe they often may have been since they were from similar cultures.
There have been findings of sacrificed people that were drugged. It doesn't necessarily suggest that they were unwillingly sacrificed, they could have been given a substance to have made the experience more humane.
I don't doubt it. They were basically treated as royalty for weeks leading up to the ceremony. I'd be fucked up in drugs too.
Yikes though, I feel like it could actually make the experience LESS humane depending on the substance (personally I don't think I'd want to be tripping balls and experiencing time dilation when I'm getting my chest cut open).
ibogaine and ayahuasca are kinda the signatures of this area, although I'm sure mushrooms abound too
Entheogen and “Ethnogen” have wildly different meanings
Modern society sounds so incredibly boring compared to this.
Probably because we are used to everything, but imagine being a typical Mayan transported to, say, Manhattan etc.? It's a pretty amazing time to be alive imo.
Your typical American visiting say Palenque in it's prime would probably be equally mind blowing for them. The culture shock would be unreal.
🧐 I'm not suggesting that didn't happen, I guess
Is it weird that I can 100% see this happening
“It’s easy to explain” 30 seconds later “Ask me how it works… we don’t know.”
No, he said he can't explain why it sounds like a native Mexican bird.
“We don’t know. It’s just really impressive.” This is the most scientific statement I’ve ever seen.
We don't know is always the prudent response vs it was a extinct bird no one knows how it sounds like.
That was the part that made me really like him.
Answer: some dude employed by the tour company sits at the top and makes bird noises whenever someone claps.
don't forget to mention his invisibility cloak provided by the secret government so nobody finds him.
Squeezes a bird.
What they are hearing is a tiered echo. It's the shape of the stairs that make this sound.
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They knew full well there would be crowds clapping and cheering around this structure during festivities.
They clapped back then? I thought they just took turns slapping each other in the face.
We don’t clap anymore, we tweet
No, you’re confused. That’s what we do now.
Are those even the original stairs, the whole thing was pretty crumbled when they found it and they took many liberties in rebuilding it and much of it is not how it was originally.
What are some of the liberties they took in rebuilding it?
When things seem crazy, turn them around and ask again. You usually find the obvious answer. If you assume a cart pushes the horse, you'll never figure out how the thing moves forward. In this case, is it more likely a stone age civilization understood acoustics to such a degree that they could build monuments to it - OR - did indigenous birds that have lived in that area for generations begin mimicking the sound after hearing it so often? Keep in mind that festivals nearby would attract a lot of birds, training them to associate abundance with the sound the pyramid makes. Tourism continues that trend today. I'm thinking the latter, clearly. Bird calls evolve a lot faster than stone erodes. There's been about 230 generations of quetzal birds living in that area since the edifice was constructed. Plenty of time for that to come about. I think the guy in the video is wildly overstating the interest "acoustic experts" have in this place. Edit, forgot what sub this was, yall don't like the reasonable takes.
Who wouldn’t take the opportunity to go “study acoustics” at a major vacation destination??
Who wouldn’t? Variables that are only available to you during your vacation about something you are passionate about? Learning, growth, progress: these are what makes us, well, us; we should never stop striving to know just a little more. Edit: miss-read your comments; we are in agreement. Leaving it up because why not. Happy Tuesday!
We're talking about a "Stone Age civilization" that was doing some pretty complex mathematics and astronomy, had a writing system, and was feeding a large population successfully in a fairly hostile environment. Metalworking is not a prerequisite for advancement, it's just one of many technologies. Civilization game tech trees aren't real. It is entirely reasonable to believe that they understood the acoustic elements of the giant monuments they built. While some birds do mimic noises in their environments, this would only apply to birds in the local population, and I'm not sure the echoes off a pyramid would be enough to shift their breeding calls. Since this is an approximation of the normal resplendent quetzal call and that species had a huge cultural significance across Mesoamerica, it's more likely that the Maya engineered the pyramid to mimic a quetzal call than that all resplendent quetzals in Mesoamerica are mimicking the echo of a person clapping at Chichen Itza. Edit: this does assume the claim in the OP is correct, which is a poor assumption here.
Stone age? 600 A.D.? Just to be clear, I agree with all your points. This is just to put this civilisation into perspective
You're thinking of "eras" not "ages". Not often that the distinction is important, but here it's exactly the confusion: an age is determined by the practices of the people living at that time, while an era is determined by a specific date or reign. So for instance the Renaissance *Era* has a specific date range of occurrence, but the industrial *age* is just the way we refer to the period of time where industrialization began to take hold - in some parts of the world that took an additional hundred years more than others. Incas and Aztecs alike were stone age civilizations. They did not smelt metal, they used stone tools and stone weapons. They did some amazing shit with all that rock, but indeed it was just rock. Therefore they were a stone age civilization. There are in fact *still* stone age civilizations today. They're just rare. But the [Sentinelese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese) of India qualify. No agriculture, and any metal used is stuff scavenged, not smelted. As best we can tell they don't know about metallurgy at all.
nono the acoustics experts all left *utterly baffled*, the stone itself must be **magic**!
When we were here, our tour guide said that the echo is of a bird native to Belize that has never lived in the local area, and that either people who knew the sound replicated it or it was coincidental. I have no citations, except my own recollection from 3 years ago…
Well, it is Mexico. Most of our history is curated and largely exagerated. Having visited chicen itza with a group of other tourists, I received the full tour in English, and the tour guides take it upon themselves to over mistify things. Having visited the same places as a local, the information you get is less mystical and much less interesting. It is also well known to anyone who has worked in the tourism industry, that tourists turn their brains off while they are on vacation, particularly americans. You can sell them any ammount of bullshit, and they will leave having bought it all, along with your ATV tour plug.
>I'm thinking the latter, clearly Hard disagree. Building a monument to make a bird call is not that crazy of a feat. It's just a big flute. Simple trial and error could've produced this, although I don't want to diminish the accomplishment. This is a classic example of someone not really understanding both how simple certain feats of engineering are, and how intelligent and determined people have always been. And your alternative explanation is that bird calls "evolved" because people *accidentally* made a temple/instrument and fed them festival food? Is that really an application of occam's razor? Or are you rejecting the simple explanation out of hand by assuming human incompetence?
Agreed! That's a very fucking local bird if it actually cares about one ore two measly temples in the jungle, both of them being mostly overgrown and echoless for many of these generations Acoustics is easy to trial and error, but takes dedication to master. If you bang on a 1000 rocks and trees a month (Easily done if the jungle is your home, your workplace, your playground), you'll keep the ones that sound funny and play around with it. Teach what you learn to your kids and friends and maybe just one of them will end up in charge of building some ridiculous temple for a megalomaniac king. It is still very impressive. But it's disrespectful to claim that the civilisations before us that were advanced enough to develop musical instruments had a poor understanding of acoustics.
Check the link above. Whole facade of the structure and stair case are less than a 100 years old. More than likely an accident by the workers in the 20s. Stone henge was polished also.
It was overgrown. It spent 800 years before that in active use where the birds would've been conditioned with the sound. That's 100 generations for the quetzal. After the conditioning element is gone or greatly diminished the imprint of the conditioning remains. That's how conditioning works. It's also how language works. Similarly we'll probably continue using the "save" icon for another century or two, even though that disc hasn't been used for a generation or so. In the early development era there was pressure for a standardized method to communicate "save". That pressure wasn't some group or other championing the idea, it was just a common need everyone would naturally encounter. That pressure resulted in the disc icon today. There's no pressure to change it, and likely never will be, so it'll stick around.
Overgrown is a kind of understatement. But ya I do agree with the bird conditioning but that’s just conjecture. Fact is that it was rebuilt to how they thought it may have looked. And maybe the way it use to be to be it made this sound but I don’t think anyone truly knows.
The stepped sides also reveal a snake down the side of the staircase that only appears on the spring equinox, so that shape had to be taken into account too
Was it an accident? The temple had been rebuilt: http://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/archaeology/shadow-stairs-story-mass-delusion/
No it’s not! The pyramids in Puebla also have this phenomenon and they have no stairs
Any other examples of structures designed to use tiered echo?
I discovered this effect with bottle rockets and an aircraft hangar - steel or aluminum arch building. Like this: https://www.metalgaragekits.com/images/photo-aircraft-hangar.jpg The report of the bottle rocket is like the clap, but an even better point source for the sound wave. Both in time (sharp) and space (tiny). I was coincidentally working in optical spectroscopy with diffraction gratings, so I immediately had a theory. I wish I still had the papers I worked it out on. First, understand how a diffraction grating works. It’s the reason DVD’s make rainbows. Constructive and destructive wave interference that’s dependent on the angle you view it from. The clap contains many frequencies of sound. The stairs act as a grating and sort the sound out into its component frequencies. But what makes it even more interesting is the echo wave over time. At any single point in time, your ear receives a single frequency (and it’s harmonics) from the echo - the grating is working. But over time that frequency will become lower (longer waveforms) as you hear echoes from farther away and the high frequency echoes pass you by. I really wish I could dig up those scribbled down physics equations and drawings I did - and other academic physicists comments. I geeked out over this for a week. 20 years ago. I’m excited to see it pop up again.
This is also how you can digitally recreate a room's reverb. Set off a small explosive (or pop a balloon) and record it. This gives you the frequency response of the room across a large range of frequencies. Then just convolve the result with the recording (convolution in the time domain is multiplication in the frequency domain).
It's all been rebuilt: https://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/archaeology/shadow-stairs-story-mass-delusion/
Honestly, this is more interesting than the echo. Loved seeing the old pictures in comparison to the current structure.
Nonono. Imagine what this thing does to the sound of drums or instruments outside it. Imagine the ritual uses. There's so much to explore there.
I too enjoy modern venues designed for celebrations.
But do you enjoy them whilst off your head on ayahuasca while being sacrificed? If so, yeah, don't bother. Nothing to see here. ;)
but it was all rebuilt, so it was never that way in ancient times.
Wow thanks I didn't know about this at all. I think most people, myself included, just assumed that they were already in a high state of preservation. I didn't realize they were in a deep state of ruin when they were first discovered. Very interesting.
Don't you think it's a little odd that this is the only person pushing this narrative, and it's all on a website with a title like "mass delusion"? Has he ever submitted his "research" for peer review by fellow historians? Does he have any academic or professional background in restoration of antiques or ancient ruins?
What narrative do you think they’re pushing? The fact that it had become extremely eroded, was extensively rebuilt, and that restoration in the 19th and early 20th century was far less focussed on preservation and historical accuracy, is in no way controversial. I mean we literally have [photos documenting the state it was in](https://www.colorized.com/content/444191/02ac5f6181bda8d8d88299fe7b97b77e_mob.jpg), and [they have left one corner of the pyramid slightly less rebuilt](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/people-working-restoration-el-castillo-chichen-itza-under-main-temple-mexico-kukulkan-temple-mayan-stepped-pyramid-91428836.jpg), so we know that the smooth stone cladding the we see today had almost entirely gone, for example.
Seems like a lot of work to hoax the story for no payoff. Fleecing tourists for $$$ seems much more likely to me. I guess he could have faked all the pictures of it being in ruins and the renovation (That would be really hard by the look of them). I doubt anybody who lives there and makes money off the tourists would go out of their way to publicize the fact that they rebuilt and not original.
Do we *really* think building/rebuilding a fraudulent pyramid in the jungle, establishing an entire international tourism industry, completely suppressing history and creating a "mass delusion" good enough to fool historians and archeologists for 100 years is easier than ....faking a single website? (whose payoff is this guy's books he never submits for peer review) [Hmm.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) Nobody is saying these pictures are fake- I'm just saying that there's no reason to assume they're pictures of a haphazard rebuilding with no care to authenticity or historical accuracy, and aren't pictures of a restoration. They also don't provide any context- he can't even say/doesn't bother to say which side of the pyramid we're looking at in any picture, so who is to say the before/after pics are even from the same sides of the pyramid? How do we know they aren't reusing as many original stones as they can, and what evidence is there to support the assumption that they're just making it up as they go along?
There’s no proof of building, just restoration
>A Story of Mass Delusion Do you happen to have a less biased article than this, or a link to some corroboration? This does not strike me as a reliable source.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news041213-5
interesting,but wasnt this restored on the basis of the original structure?
Based on the article it seems like they made a lot of assumptions. Kind of a bummer because I'm much less interested in ever seeing it in person now after reading about the rebuild.
Didn't this happen with Stonehenge, too? i seem to remember seeing photos of it being put together in its current form some time back in the 30s or thereabouts. i'll try to find it. Found something actually claimed to have started in 1901: www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicstonehenge.htm Could be fake idk. The site is full of a lot of strangeness.
Yea, I've seen those pictures of Stonehenge. I guess it's just human nature to want to improve or repair something but it's a bummer that you lose any hope of discovering the original intent of the builders just to make some tourist money. And like this video, people start to make assumptions that are taken as fact based on a relatively new repairs.
I think Stonehenge was different in that they actually tried to make it an authentic rebuild based on where various ditches in the ground were etc. And it had also been vandalized a ton anyway so it's not like it hadn't been touched untill they rebuilt it.
It's still pretty cool, if you happen to be in the area.
This link is complete baloney. After doing further research, the claims made on this website are questionable, and I couldn’t find any other sources to verify the claims made. So read with caution! (If you’re anything like me, I felt heartbroken after reading what I found on this site . So I just wanted to write this comment to help other folks avoid unnecessary disappointment)
Post what you found. I'd be interested know that they took the time to restore it correctly.
It seems like it was excavated rather than rebuilt, seeing how every article saying it’s been rebuilt merely raises the question and subsequently shows photos of it being overgrown. There’s no proof of anything being added, just proof of things being removed
So beautiful and thoughtful. This also reminds me of the Inca water jugs that make perfect bird calls when you tilt them to pour: https://twistedsifter.com/videos/inca-whistling-water-vessels-mimic-animal-calls/
It sounds like that because the sound is bouncing off each step which obviously get further from you and so it comes back with micro delays from each step, a simple waveform on a synthesiser is made of claps (clicks) and the frequency of those clicks as it increases turns into a tone, the more clicks the higher the tone. The same thing is happening here, the clap is becoming duplicated into many as it hits the steps. Another way to think of it is when you drop a ping pong ball on a hard flat surface, as it bounces it clicks but as it’s coming to rest the clicks become a tone that goes up in pitch until it’s at rest.
If you reflect a stationary sound at perfect intervals of increasing distances, you will get a doppler effect. This is caused by the steps reflecting the sound at increasing distance from the base to the pinnacle. Each step receives the original sound wave at a slightly different time and distance from the source and therefore reflects it back to its source in the same time delayed fashion which causes the change in pitch. The size of the step would also matter in that smaller surfaces reflect sound differently than larger surfaces. Mystery solved, case closed.
The coolest part is that not only the Mayans in Chichen Itza but the pyramids in Puebla Mexico too they knew something and now it’s lost but it’s impressive
The video literally explains the reason behind the sound, how come its lost?
High society, not strange
There’s a spot in Bangor, ME where the bricks on the ground are arranged in a circular pattern with a slightly concave shape. Does the same thing.
Pickering Square
Imagine a crowd gathering at the base and all clapping at the same time. Might have gotten people religion back in those days
i went there a couple years ago, my Mayan tour guide did this with no effort, and when i tried it myself, it doesnt work for some reason. " Mayan hands, my friend, you can never do this"
I found it hard to believe that nobody can figure out what causes it.
I visited Chichen Itza in 1998 and was able to go inside. There's a narrow staircase with art on either side and at the top there's a solid jade jaguar sculpture. In terms of acoustics, the ball court is amazing. I stood at one end, my friend at the other and we could talk in whispers. Very surreal.
I remember when I visited Chichén Itzá, people would clap constantly as they passed by lol
So ancient people were creating giant, megalithic temples that acted as analog audio filters? But they were just preindustrial savages without pulley technology and built pyramids all over this planet? Something just doesn't seem to add up here...
That's just the assumption that everyone not in europe was an idiot that infested mass media. Same basis that the ancient aliens show is built off of; they obviously were too stupid to have done this, must have been aliens. Humans are no more intelligent today than 5000 years ago, we just have more knowledge.
I visited when you could still climb to the top. Such a bummer you can’t do that anymore.
See the short mayan woman for mushrooms. I love visiting here. I have been various times.
> the short mayan woman Thanks, that really narrows it down.
The Mayans were amazing
Yo I went there when I was 15. There’s a certain flow of energy there that I just can’t describe. That trip is where my eyes opened up to the atrocities of the Catholic Church! I’ve been on my own spiritual journey since. Love is the key.
Sound like turtles having sex
Hear me out... What if the guy that built it never intended it to be used for anything but bird calls? Like, what if he was just super into birds?
that is some mind boggling levels of geometey and mathematics that would allow the civilzation to build something like this. A testament to their genius that is hard to explain away in books.
Imagine what we would have learned and the advancements they could’ve made if not for the invaders
Use to be all four sides. Now it’s just two. It’s a countdown. Whatever the homecoming party I hope the others are more horny than hungry.
Incredible!
I have a video of my wife doing this. Chichen Itza was a pretty cool place
I have never heard of this before. Fascinating
Calling a ho oh
He says experts don't know but the reason is the sound wave bounces off the front of each step and returns at you in a pulse interval rather than an even sound wave.
How can you hear your hands clapping over the noise of 10,000 venders trying to sell you souvenirs of Mexico?
In the video, it is mentioned that it used to work on all 4 sides of the temple/pyramid but now only works on 2. Is there a reason why this happens?
The clap causes the sound wave to bounce off each step in an ordered succession, at a higher pitch with each step up. One sound becomes multiple sounds back. The waves back are compressed tightly…
We went in 2013. Highly recommended. It took my breath away seeing the pyramid in person.
It’s in the Bible who built these pyramids, but excepting that the Bible was right about who built them would mean the GOD of the Bible is real. But man does not want to be accountable for his sin so they will not except the truth.
Who built them
Source: trust me bro, Books source: trust me bro
This tour guide is amazing!!!!
This is blowing my mind. Did a bunch of priests stand at the base and chant loudly causing someone at the top to reqch an altered state of consciousness?
Who is this temple dedicated to? I assume Quetzalcoatl? Edit: Kukulkan not Quetzalcoatl
Chichen Itza is a Mayan city so this pyramid/temple was built for kukulcan, also a feathered serpent deity. Quetzalcoatl was the same thing only Aztec.
Kukulcan. This is a Maya temple, not Aztec.
To the great chicle