The classical principle of cognition says: if some discovery has already been made and reasoned, then you need to recognize it and try to make a new discovery in some other area. But recently, a completely different principle has been applied to historical facts, phenomena and artifacts: if some discovery has already been made, you can simply refute it, while using the most dubious evidence or completely dispensing with evidence. This approach is applied both to individual phenomena of history and to the entire historical process as a whole; this fashionable fad was not spared by the Mayan pyramids, regarding which alternative options for their dating suddenly appeared.
Why are these pyramids worse than the Egyptian ones?
Most often, the revision of the age of the Mayan pyramids is carried out according to two schemes. The first scheme is the attribution of a certain age to these structures with reference to some mythical scientists who “calculated” and it turned out that the Mayan pyramids were built 5, 7, 8, 10 thousand years ago - depending on the author's preferences for this or that version. Usually, such theoretical constructions are used when comparing the pyramids of Pre-Columbian America with other similar religious buildings, whether before the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia (the legendary Tower of Babel), the pyramids in China, and so on.
This comparison most often has two purposes: either the opinion is defended that all the monumental structures of antiquity are the creation of one mysterious civilization (and then they have approximately the same mythical age), or it is argued that the Mayan pyramids are much older than other structures, which is supposedly also indicates the special mystery of this people.
The more fantastic the better
The second scheme does not provide for any mention of academic science and the discoveries of scientists at all, because it appeals to concepts, "historical" events and states that are not recognized by science. One of the variants of such legends, related directly to Central America, connects the Mayan pyramids with the Atlantean civilization, which, according to the modern version. It was even more powerful than the Atlantis described by Plato. In different versions of the legend, the inhabitants of Atlantis were either a new stage in human evolution, or the descendants of aliens, and the Mayan civilization was their "regional branch". The death of Atlantis is arbitrarily appointed for a period of 15-12 thousand years ago as a result of some global natural cataclysm (a meteorite fall, a giant tsunami, earthquakes - the choice is quite large), therefore,and the appearance of the Mayan pyramids is attributed at least to the same time, so that, according to this version, they are in no way less than 13 thousand years old.
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Boring scientific data
In general, alternative theories regarding the age of the Mayan pyramids have varying degrees of fantasy, some of them try to operate with logical concepts and scientific terms, others have not even tried to do this for a long time. In any case, from the point of view of science, the whole range of assumptions attributing the age of the Mayan civilization to the pyramids exceeding 3 thousand years has no basis. The fact is that all the data available to specialists indicate that most of the Mayan pyramids that have survived to our time were built in the so-called classical period - that is, from the 3rd to the 10th centuries AD (thus, they are from a thousand to 1800 years old) … At the same time, there are pyramids and remains of pyramids that date back to the middle of the 1st millennium BC, in some cases there is reason to believethat the first pyramid-temples of the Maya arose at the turn of the II and I millennia BC.
There are at least two reasons for dating the Mayan pyramids in this chronological range. As for the most ancient Mayan pyramids, their age is established by traditional archaeological methods - due to the scientific determination of the age of those objects that were found in the layers corresponding to the foundations of these structures. Regarding the pyramids of the classical period of the history of the Mayan civilization, it is still simpler - there are deciphered Mayan texts, some of which narrate about the creation of pyramid temples in various cities of the states according to the instructions of specific rulers and priests. Thanks to the highly developed calendar, all the events of their history the Maya were carefully recorded, so it is not difficult to determine, based on the primary source, when exactly the most famous Mayan pyramids were built,to then confirm this with data from archaeological research. So, no matter how much the lovers of the secrets of history would like, there are no intrigues in this question about the age of the Mayan pyramids.
Alexander Babitsky
