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A comment on Maya ritual cave ‘untouched’ for 1k years stuns archaeologists. Parent comment

Re:Maya ritual cave ‘untouched’ for 1k years stuns archaeolo... by dkersten on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:52AM (#19318486)
"Religious site" always seems like a cop-out to me, like saying "we don't know what this was used for, must have been a religious site", but since I'm not an archaeologist or historian, I have to trust that the people who actually are those things know what they're doing and know how to determine if something truly was a religious site or not.
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Re:Maya ritual cave ‘untouched’ for 1k years stuns archaeolo... by 8bitsrule on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @08:54PM (#19324932)
Yes. I have the same reaction when I see an old site called a 'temple'. Who -knows- what the frame of mind was of a culture thousands of years ago (particularly if nothing's written)? Often it seems like just another way of implying 'pre-scientific', 'magical', 'savage'... less-developed than us.

A more -practical- explanation seems more plausible in many cases. E.g. Gobekli looks -educational- to my eyes; I see multiple classrooms.

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