“More Complex Than Previously Thought”

Interesting blog posting on the idea of science and new discoveries.  Usually 'More' seldom 'less' complex TPT.

FTA: The pursuit of science is an interesting beast. It’s awesome to distill our world down to a basic set of principles…laws, rules, and theorems that explain, or at the very least describe, how things work. On the other hand, the more you dig into things, the more interesting and surprising they can be. Previous notions end up being overturned, or perhaps even more frequently, the accepted phenomenon turns out to be “more complex than previously thought.”

...

New discovery throws light on mystery of pyramids' construction

New insights into ancient Egypt.

FTA...  the job of hauling into place the huge blocks of stone used to build the monuments may have been completed more quickly than previously thought.

Are these Danish cities older than previously thought?

Rethinking common knowledge is not only for the Americas.


FTA: "Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and look again. And I think that's the case here,"

  Summary article about this original citation:

 Mads Runge et al. The origins of Odense – new aspects of early urbanisation in southern Scandinavia, Danish Journal of Archaeology (2018). DOI: 10.1080/21662282.2018.1475891 

LiDAR Scans Reveal Maya Were Far Bigger and More Complex Than Thought

FTA: Discover  summary of a Science paper

:  “It’s amazing. It’s so new. This is the kind of thing that no one ever suspected to show up,” says Michael Coe, a Yale University archaeologist and Maya scholar who’s not involved with the team. “It’s a major discovery.”

my comment: Looking back through my links on this blog, this has been a recurring theme recently.  It takes awhile before things change from TPT to common knowledge.

Aztec human sacrifices were far more widespread and grisly TPT

FTA: In 2015 archaeologists from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found a gruesome 'trophy rack' near the site of the Templo Mayor,

FTA: Now, they say the find was just the tip of the iceberg, and that the 'skull tower' was just a small part of a massive display of skulls known as Huey Tzompantli...

Another TPT story without using the words TPT !! " every textbook has to be rewritten"

Laser scanning reveals 'lost' ancient Mexican city 'had as many buildings as Manhattan'

: “Everywhere you point the lidar instrument you find new stuff, and that is because we know so little about the archaeological universe in the Americas right now,” he said. “Right now every textbook has to be rewritten, and two years from now[they’re] going to have to be rewritten again.”

Sprawling Maya network... scale greater TPT

Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Maya ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough.


...He believes the scale and population density has been "grossly underestimated and could in fact be three or four times greater than previously thought".

other quiotes
"I think this is one of the greatest advances in over 150 years of Maya archaeology,"

"Everything is turned on its head," 

See the article at the link.