“Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop

“Ancient Mayan city” discovered by teen may in fact be cannabis crop(bbc.com)

115 points by markhellewell 10 years ago | 42 comments

You could literally throw a dart at a map of the Yucatan/Northern Central America and it would land on an "Ancient Mayan city". I grew up there, and our house was built on top of Maya ruins, we'd find hundreds of ruins in the surrounding mountains. We used to dig up full ceramic bowls and a ton of obsidian in the garden.

The hype around this kid is amazing.

Kukulkan 10 years ago | |

I'm Mexican and i can confirm this. The south is full of "undiscovered" pyramids. There are in certain regions tons of fake mountains. And even in mexico city you just need to digg a little bit in certain places to find artifacts and art. There is just not enough funding in archeology, and once "discovered" its expensive to take care of them. Which is a shame really because there are tons of things we dont know about this civilizations. Precolombian history is full of speculations.

abandonliberty 10 years ago | | |

I thought the main expense was maintenance after unearthing, as deterioration accelerates?

azernik 10 years ago | |

Like Roman stuff in the Middle East. It's interesting when something pops up that's particularly well preserved, but that they were here is not a particular surprise.

sspiff 10 years ago | | |

Or Roman stuff in Europe, though often ruins in the ME are better preserved because they got covered in sand (and IS did not find them yet).

readams 10 years ago |

The claim that it's a cannabis field is at least as unsupportable as any other claims. It's a throwaway comment in the article, and frankly considering the remoteness of the location seems very unlikely.

jonnathanson 10 years ago |

Usually you find the cannabis before you find the lost Mayan city. Kid's got it all wrong.

St-Clock 10 years ago |

So we've been in Le Monde[1], now BBC and Hacker News. All of this because a tabloid newspaper from Montreal thought it was better to gain exposure than to protect and correct a young aspiring scientist. A local "mythbuster" [2] already debunked the whole story, but alas, the trashy newspaper is still pushing this fiasco from new angles every day.

I fear this whole story will be extremely bad for the kid and most news outlets should blame the newspaper instead of focusing on the kid or the bad science part.

[1] http://mobile.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2016/05/11/l-hi... [2] http://journalmetro.com/opinions/inspecteur-viral/962214/ce-...

spraak 10 years ago |

> "The whole thing is a mess - a terrible example of junk science hitting the internet in free-fall," wrote Dr David Stuart

Wouldn't it actually be an excellent example of 'junk science hitting the internet in free-fall' ?

ludamad 10 years ago | |

An example can be 'terrible' in many ways

saalweachter 10 years ago | |

Perhaps the archaic definition, "causing terror"? Does the idea that random bunk can consume both scientific resources and digital ink terrify you?

themartorana 10 years ago | |

"I'm in terrible pain."

cyphar 10 years ago | | |

"This is an excellent example of excruciating pain". The "terrible" in "terrible example of X" means that it's a bad example of X, not that it's a good example of how X is bad.

danso 10 years ago |

Maybe the link should be changed to Gizmodo instead of "BBC Trending" (which seems to be the linkbait division of BBC)...Gizmodo has much more detail and original reporting, e.g. contacting the Canadian Space Agency for comment:

http://gizmodo.com/experts-doubt-that-a-teen-found-a-lost-ma...

FWIW, the CSA doesn't seem to have much of an explanation...

> We asked De Lisle to respond to the claims made by experts that this is “junk science,” and that the objects in the satellite photos are probably abandoned milpas. To which he responded: “The area of interest covers more than 78 square kilometers, and many linear features that appear manmade are visible from space.” Which is not much of an answer.

If the Maya ruins end up being nothing, I think this story is a great example of how silly it is to think of science as one monolithic entity, where every scientist automatically has a clue about fields far outside of their expertise. The CSA were likely impressed with the kid's tracking of the stars...there's no reason to think the CSA has any expertise in what an actual Maya city looks like.

fleitz 10 years ago | |

Science is a method, I don't understand why 'science' is all lumped together anymore than mechanics and carpenters being 'hammer users'

Vraxx 10 years ago | |

While I think your point about misplaced expertise is a accurate point in most regards, there is reason to believe that the space agency might have some expertise in the field of remote sensing. NASA launched many satellites that are invaluable tools for the field and they continue to research data gathered by these satellites and post it on many of their sites [0]. They also employ image analysts trained in analyzing this data, so it's not that far fetched to believe the Canadian Space Agency might have had image analysts that agreed with the kid. I'd also like to add that I would also have expected some sort of in person verification, or at least higher resolution aerial imagery to have been gathered before breaking out the party cake.

[0]: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/

edit: oops, I forgot my link

sickbeard 10 years ago | |

I think "discovered" is a sticking point for a lot of people. how can you discover something if you haven't verified it with boots? Somehow everything got lost in translation.

smegel 10 years ago |

Before they get into a big flame-fest, maybe someone should go and, you know, check it out.

Cthulhu_ 10 years ago | |

One does not simply walk into the Mexican jungle.

TillE 10 years ago | | |

It looks pretty remote even for sending in a light aircraft with a camera, so I guess it's not too surprising that some possibly interesting feature hasn't been quickly investigated.

partycoder 10 years ago |

Clickbait 2, the revenge of the clickbait

Overtonwindow 10 years ago |

Whoops, well give the kid high marks for trying

spraak 10 years ago | |

cough high marks cough ? :P

hudell 10 years ago |

I'm actually surprised that I saw the "it was false" news pretty much everywhere, without even seeing the original news anywhere.

kangar00 10 years ago |

It may be anything, but I think it's a little strange how they shot this down so fast without any evidence. Makes me wonder if this is a desperate attempt to deter looters.

ceejayoz 10 years ago | |

Probably not.

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/32829/has-a-fift...

> Very few Maya constellations have been identified, and even in these cases we do not know how many and which stars exactly composed each constellation. It is thus impossible to check whether there is any correspondence between the stars and the location of Maya cities. In general, since we know of several environmental facts that influenced the location of Maya settlements, the idea correlating them with stars is utterly unlikely.

> In this case, the rectilinear nature of the feature and the secondary vegetation growing back within it are clear signs of a relic milpa. I’d guess its been fallow for 10-15 years. This is obvious to anyone that has spent any time at all in the Maya lowlands.

kangar00 10 years ago | | |

I didn't know about the relic milpa idea. I guess if there were a lot of thick solid fertilizer just in that rectangular area that wouldn't run off easily, it could possibly do that.

I think someone should check it out to be sure.

markhellewell 10 years ago | |

deter looters by advertising a cash crop? :)

iopuy 10 years ago |

Off topic but what is the purpose of the photo of the young lady at the bottom of the article? At first I thought it was the teen that made the discovery, then I thought it might be the author (on mobile this information is not easily visible), finally I concluded it has something to do with another article and is spliced into the original in a very confusing manner.

danso 10 years ago | |

BBC Trending is a site for clickbait/hot-takes...a common feature of these sites is to include the header of another story to entice you to make another click. It's like the news sites that infinitely scroll from one article to the next, except without the infinite scroll's auto load.

jackgavigan 10 years ago |

Cripes, people are such killjoys! The counter-claims pooh-poohing the lad's "discovery" smack of schadenfreudensuchen. So what if there's a bit of media hype? It's a nice feelgood story and the kid hasn't done anything wrong. In fact, that's the sort of curiosity and inquisitiveness we should be fostering in schoolkids.

ceejayoz 10 years ago | |

The kid should be applauded and encouraged in his interest in science/discovery. The media outlets that apparently didn't do even a tiny bit of checking with experts before running with it, though, have been irresponsible, and that's what the experts are upset about.

Pica_soO 10 years ago |

Lets give this a little twist. Teen arrested for 'accidentally' finding marijuana with google maps. Claims the stars guided him there.

yolesaber 10 years ago |

Obviously these so-called "scientists" are lizard-spawn who are covering their cloacas that this youth was able to deduce the location of their eldritch portals.

mpitt 10 years ago |

I'll just throw this in. John Oliver on science and bullshit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw