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Embark on an extraordinary journey as we delve into the captivating world of Mayan civilization
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00:00Can you tell me what date it is today?
00:02Piece of cake.
00:03You just look at your smartphone and voila, you immediately know the day, month and year.
00:08But was it always this easy to tell the date?
00:10Did the ancient people even have the concept of a year that lasts 365 days?
00:15Yes and no.
00:16Mayan calendars had cycles.
00:18That's close to what we call a year.
00:20But the Mayan cycle was much longer.
00:238-19 days.
00:25And this is where the mystery begins.
00:278-19 days compared to what?
00:30When does this calendar begin and when does it end?
00:33Scientists were asking themselves this question for decades.
00:37They discovered and deciphered the Mayan calendar during the 1940s.
00:41Recently, two American scientists, John Linden and Victoria Bricker, came forward with a solution.
00:47So, what did they do differently from their predecessors?
00:51The duo deciphered the code by broadening their thinking.
00:54They expanded the calendar from 8-19 days to full 45 years.
01:00That's 20 times longer than the original cycle.
01:02And a pattern started to emerge.
01:05This was a major breakthrough because the Maya told time in a complicated way.
01:09You can forget about the easy-to-read Arabic numerals we have today.
01:12These ancient people used glyphs.
01:14These are tiny images that represent characters.
01:17Something like the icons on your desktop or universal symbols.
01:22When you see a little dot with three curved lines above it, you know there is a Wi-Fi network
01:27available.
01:28The Mayan calendar used glyphs that represented animals or natural phenomena.
01:32For example, there were symbols for a jaguar and an eagle.
01:35Each glyph marked one day.
01:37Each cycle is repeated four times, 8-19x4.
01:41Let's call these four cycles blocks.
01:43The Mayas colored each block differently.
01:46Scientists thought these colors corresponded to the four cardinal directions.
01:50Red was east, white, north.
01:53West was black and finally, yellow marked south.
01:56But then the 1980s came.
01:58Yeah, this was a weird decade.
02:00The calculations were all wrong.
02:02Researchers determined that the colors were associated with the position of the sun in the sky.
02:06It turned out that the color yellow represented the highest point of the sun, which is called a zenith.
02:12White was the lowest point, called the nadir.
02:15It seems that the calendar showed just how good the ancient Mayas were at astronomy.
02:20This is most evident at Chichen Itza.
02:22This principal Mayan city is located on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
02:26There stands an impressive steppe pyramid.
02:28It is dedicated to the feathered serpent deity, and its alignment is perfect.
02:32In fact, something marvelous happens here twice a year, during the equinoxes, March and September.
02:37These are the times when the sun shines directly over the equator.
02:41On these two dates, the day and night last the same.
02:45At the site of the pyramid, sunlight first illuminates the sculpture of the serpent head at the base of the
02:50structure.
02:51Then it makes its way up the 91 steps.
02:54This creates the illusion that a snake is slithering down the pyramid.
02:58Even today, people gather to witness the site.
03:01And it must have been more impressive when the Mayas completed the structure 1050-1300 CE.
03:07Do you know what a synodic period is?
03:09Neither do I.
03:11But Mayan astronomers did.
03:13A synodic period is the time that passes before a stellar body does a full lap.
03:18For example, this is the period between two full moons.
03:21When you look from Earth, this period lasts roughly 30 days.
03:26And the Mayas were looking at the skies non-stop.
03:29They carefully noted the synodic periods of all planets.
03:32From Venus to Saturn, these ancient astronomers kept records of nearly all celestial bodies.
03:37But what does this have to do with their calendar?
03:40The American researchers' calculations revealed the link.
03:44Let's take the planet closest to the sun as an example, Mercury.
03:47Its synodic period is 117 days.
03:50Multiply that by 7 and you get which number?
03:53Exactly 8 to 19, 117, X7 equals sign 819.
03:57Coincidence?
03:58Definitely not.
03:59Because synodic periods of other planets also neatly match the magical figure 819.
04:05But this is not visible from a single Mayan cycle.
04:08Scientists had to expand it several times to discover the pattern.
04:11There is a reason why no one could decipher the code for so long.
04:14They were focused on a single planet.
04:16The trick was to add the Mayan calculation for all the planets.
04:20Researchers just needed to see the bigger picture.
04:24This brings us to the year 2012.
04:26Can you remember that some people thought that the world would end on December 21st?
04:31That turned out to be a bust.
04:33We are alive and well now.
04:35But what started this false rumor?
04:37The Mayan calendar, of course.
04:40You see, these ancient people based their calendar on long periods of all the planets.
04:44That included a lot of complicated math and a lot of multiplying.
04:49This 2012 was simply the time when their cycle ended.
04:53It is known as the long count.
04:55This period is the same as our year.
04:57For the Mayas, 2012 was something like the 31st of December for us.
05:02Just an end of a cycle in which they measured time, so there was no need to panic.
05:06Those New Year's Eve parties might be a bit wild, but the world doesn't end on January 1st.
05:12The Mayas stretched more than their calendar.
05:15Rubber was the name of the game.
05:17Yes, you've heard it correctly.
05:18Unfortunately, these ancient people were making different grades of rubber 3,000 years before one famous American did, Charles Goodyear.
05:26They would extract natural latex from the rubber tree.
05:29This is a milky substance that can be turned into rubber.
05:32And they weren't the only ones.
05:35Scientists found evidence that their neighbors, the Aztecs and the Olmecs, did the same.
05:41But what did they do with rubber?
05:43They didn't need car tires, definitely.
05:45But it's cool to have a nice pair of sandals for the beach.
05:48The Spanish wrote about rubber sole footwear that natives wore.
05:52Sadly, scientists still haven't found them.
05:55That would be a big step for archaeology.
05:57So the Maya were playful with rubber, literally.
06:01Researchers guessed that they produced balls from latex.
06:04These were bouncy and ranged in size from a softball to a soccer ball.
06:08A typical Mayan ballgame, pits, involved two hoops.
06:12You must be thinking basketball, but not quite.
06:15The hoops were set on walls, 23 feet high.
06:18Compare that to the NBA standard of 10 feet.
06:21And the hoop was the other way around.
06:24There is also a sweet side to the story of the Mayas.
06:27These ancient people enjoyed chocolate.
06:29In fact, the modern word chocolate probably comes from their language, socolatl.
06:33This meant bitter water.
06:36Okay, you get the bitter part.
06:38But why water?
06:39The Mayas didn't produce chocolate in the form we know it today.
06:42They didn't make bars of chocolate.
06:44They drank it.
06:45Smashed cocoa beans made for excellent drinks.
06:48The Mayas perfected the mixture over time and even added spices.
06:52Anyone up for a fiery chocolate drink with stew, peppers, and cornmeal?
06:55Who knows?
06:56Maybe this beverage actually tasted well.
06:59Cocoa beans were sacred and used as a currency.
07:02Researchers believe all social classes got to enjoy it.
07:05Free chocolate for all sounds nice even today.
07:08But where did the Mayas get clean water for their cocoa drinks?
07:12From the oldest known filtration system in the Western Hemisphere.
07:15It was based on zeolite.
07:17These are minerals that contain aluminum and silicone compounds.
07:21And guess what?
07:23Modern air and water purifiers still use this material.
07:26Mayan tech wins yet again.
07:28Back in Europe, Roger Bacon developed a sand filtration system in 1627.
07:33Some 1,800 years after the Mayas.
07:36But what about regions without rivers, lakes, or springs?
07:39Mayan engineers had it all figured out.
07:42Rainwater.
07:43They would carve out large reservoirs in the limestone bedrock.
07:46Then, they would coat these underground caves with a layer of a watertight material.
07:51The final step was to make small channels that collected water from the hills above.
07:55Scientists estimated that just one of these reservoirs could hold on average 10,000 gallons of rainwater.
08:01Enough to fill 55 modern hot tubs.
08:05So, imagine you're 15 and you get bored of playing video games.
08:09Instead, to pass the time, you decide to give some attention to an old hobby of yours.
08:15Tracking down lost Mayan cities.
08:17You've heard that some ancient civilizations are said to have built entire cities based on constellations.
08:23So, you decide to check out whether that was true for the Mayans.
08:27You find a book containing all the constellations the Mayan civilization believed to exist.
08:33You open good old Google Maps and map every ancient Mayan city discovered to date.
08:38You start seeing that this information actually matches.
08:42And truly, the biggest ancient Mayan cities correspond to the brightest and biggest stars of the Mayan constellations.
08:50Okay, this is getting interesting.
08:52You manage to map out over 100 ancient cities when you suddenly notice something strange.
08:58There's an area in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico where archaeologists have unearthed two Mayan cities.
09:05But, on the constellation map, there are three stars.
09:09Could this mean there is a long-lost city waiting to be discovered nearby?
09:14You might think this sounds too daydreaming.
09:17But the story is actually true.
09:19The previous account happened to a Canadian teenager named William Gaddery.
09:24The boy is known as a science genius and had even won an award for the constellation theory we presented
09:30just now.
09:31When he noticed that a third city was missing from the 23rd constellation he was examining,
09:36he began to scour the internet for satellite pictures that could help him solve this mystery.
09:42He looked into images from NASA, JAXA, a Japan-based satellite company, and Google Earth.
09:48These images were still insufficient to answer his questions.
09:52So, he reached out to a friend inside the Canadian Space Agency.
09:56His friend provided him with state-of-the-art satellite imagery that gave him the answer he was looking for.
10:03According to the images, there is a large square area right on the border of Mexico and Belize,
10:09which looks like the remains of a city.
10:11William took the images to a remote sensing expert known as Dr. Armin LaRocque from the University of New Brunswick.
10:18They studied the images thoroughly and concluded that the area could be housing 30 buildings and even a large pyramid.
10:27The scientific and archaeological community went crazy with the 15-year-old's discovery.
10:32Could this really be true?
10:34Some background.
10:36Lost Mayan cities began to be unearthed in the mid-20th century.
10:40Since then, ruins from cities such as Tikal, Palenik, and Uxmal have been rediscovered.
10:46The Mayans were one of the biggest pre-Columbian civilizations living in the Americas.
10:51They began to settle in the area as early as 1500 BCE.
10:56Experts believe that, at its height, the Mayan civilization consisted of over 40 cities with a population of millions of
11:04people.
11:04That's a crowd.
11:06And their cities were pretty interesting.
11:08Their civilization spanned over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, and Belize.
11:13They survived mainly on agriculture, so they developed a complex irrigation system in most of their cities.
11:20They built a series of ceremonial buildings, pyramids, plazas, and even courts for ballgames.
11:27The Mayans were keen pyramid builders, but they also developed an advanced astronomical system.
11:33With whatever ancient technology they had, they were able to predict the exact location of planets, such as Venus and
11:41Mars, and they were able to predict the exact dates of eclipses.
11:45That's why the methodology William used to discover this long-lost Mayan city was unusual, but not completely surreal.
11:52The Mayans were keen astronomers, so it wouldn't be too strange that they built their major architectural feats in relation
12:00to the sky, would it?
12:02And they wouldn't be the first ones to be doing so.
12:05There is a famous fringe of Egyptology dedicated to studying how the Giza pyramids were built in perfect alignment with
12:13the Orion constellation,
12:14meaning that each pyramid was purposely built to align with one of the major stars of Orion's belt.
12:21According to William, he first had the idea to look at the Mayan constellations because he couldn't understand why the
12:29Mayans built their cities where they built them.
12:31Most major cities, such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal, aren't near any rivers or significant bodies of water.
12:37Instead, they're built on marginal lands and on top of mountains, which confused the 15-year-old.
12:44His next thought was that it might have something to do with astronomy.
12:48William named the new city he discovered Mouth of Fire, which is also my nickname, and he even won a
12:54merit award for his hard work.
12:56However, his theory was very much contested inside the archaeological community, and many Mayan experts worked to debunk William's findings.
13:05Some archaeologists say that constellation theories are too unscientific.
13:10Anthony Aveni, a renowned anthropologist and astronomer, referred to William's methodology as an act of creative imagination.
13:19He explained that there is no way to be sure what the Mayan constellations really were.
13:24It's all just hypothetical.
13:27Another debunking of William's findings came from Mayanist David Stewart,
13:31who said that the object identified on the satellite imagery is nothing but an old cornfield.
13:37His claim was supported by an expedition that took place near the area in 2021,
13:43when the archaeologists present reported there was nothing at all in this area.
13:48Still, a 15-year-old boy almost found a long-lost Mayan city, which is pretty exciting if you ask
13:55me.
13:55Similar techniques, as those used by William, are actually being used to unearth lost civilizations all over the world.
14:02According to space archaeologist Sarah Parquet,
14:06satellite imagery has been a key player in discovering ancient cities in Egypt and other places.
14:11Sarah herself spends most of her days scouring images for any sign of where there could have been cities long
14:17ago.
14:18What happens, she says, is that any time you have something buried,
14:22it's going to be covered either by vegetation, soil or sand, or some other modern construction on top of it.
14:29In order to assess whether there is something hidden under large canopies of vegetation or not,
14:35she uses infrared technology, for instance.
14:38A major recent discovery in Brazil was done in a similar way.
14:42Satellite imagery detected a network of trenches dating back to 200 to 1200 CE.
14:49These suggest settlements that could have supported around 60,000 people.
14:54But in this case, the satellite imagery did indeed correspond to what was on the ground.
15:00Researchers from the University of Florida found several mountains that were accompanied by ditches and geoglyphs.
15:07Archaeologists also found remnants of carefully designed walls centered around closets,
15:13much like the type of construction done by the ancient Mayans.
15:16Advances in satellite tech have also shed new light on long-discovered ancient Mayan cities, such as Tikal.
15:24Located in the heart of the Guatemalan jungle,
15:27Tikal is believed to have been the capital of the ancient Mayan empire.
15:30At its height, it was comparable in importance to cities such as London or New York in today's world.
15:37It was composed of a series of complex monuments,
15:41many of them believed to have been the resting places of kings and chiefs.
15:45Tikal is already known to have been big,
15:48but recent discoveries show it could have been even three times larger than what scientists originally believed.
15:54The main discovery revolves around a fortification on the outskirts of the city,
15:59indicating how far the original cities stretched.
16:02And new discoveries still take place.
16:05In 2017, researchers also unearthed new clues regarding the potential causes of the decline of the Mayan civilization.
16:13Using data from a site in Seawal, located 62 miles southwest of Tikal,
16:19scientists analyzed radiocarbon data from ceramics and archaeological excavations
16:24to extract new information about the sudden demise of this great civilization.
16:29The information shows that, instead of a sudden collapse,
16:33the Mayans most likely collapsed in waves of social instability and political crises.
16:39These events are believed to have deteriorated Mayan city centers
16:43and began causing the dispersion of the Mayan population.
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