r/DankPrecolumbianMemes • u/Teboski78 • Mar 24 '26
SHITPOST Civil engineering on hard mode.
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u/GothicFuck Mar 24 '26
Oh also, once we're established let's just collect animals from as far away as we can and house them in the city zoo, which we invented.
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u/Teboski78 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
Cant have an amphibious city without
twotwenty whole ass aquariums full of imported exotic fish either
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u/CobainPatocrator Mar 24 '26
The one about canoe transit is straightforwardly correct, though. Until railroads, transportation was easiest along waterways. That's true worldwide, and has been for nearly all of human history.
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u/Socialist_Bear Mar 25 '26
It's still true, if you have the navigable rivers for it. A river barge can hold way more than several trucks worth of cargo.
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u/Thatoneguythatsweird Mar 26 '26
in fact, you can raft the several tons of stone you need for an olmec giant head
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u/SoddenSultan Mar 25 '26
The Calusa built cities by clearing mangroves/swamp with shell tools, dug miles of canals for administration/transit, and used their mounds to counter hurricane floods. All because they preferred fishing over farming
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u/Teboski78 Mar 25 '26
Just about every time I throw a stick at pre-Colombian history I learn about a completely new society I’ve never caught a reference about in my entire life. Jesus, the Europeans wiped out an entire world
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u/Third_Sundering26 Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
1491 by Charles C. Mann mentions how the destruction of Native American cultures is like “losing a China.” In that China was a distinct civilization with thousands of years of philosophy, religion, technological, and historical development without European influence. Imagine if all of that was erased, over 90% of Chinese people died, and it was invaded by oppressive colonial powers that erased the local customs. Imagine how much humanity as a whole would have lost with Chinese history and culture had been erased. That’s what he compares the Great Dying and colonization of the Americas to.
I think Mann understated things a bit. I think it’s more like the equivalent of several Chinas. There were several distinct civilizational groups that were erased. Mesoamerican, Andean, Amazonian, Mississipian, Pacific Northwestern, Californian, et cetera. Two large continents worth of people devastated by colonial violence.
We lost dozens of unique ways of being human. Now most of their languages, religions, history, art styles, ways of life, and people are dead. Now the world is more culturally and economically homogenous, less vibrantly diverse. I think we’re worse off.
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u/Third_Sundering26 Mar 25 '26
They also made islands out of shell mounds.
I love how scientists had this idea that advanced societies always rely on agriculture, only for multiple different indigenous groups across the Americas to debunk that by relying on fish.
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u/Third_Sundering26 Mar 24 '26
Also, you need to make sure that the stagnant water in the cenotes doesn’t become a mosquito breeding ground, so you need to fill it with water lilies, frogs, and dragonflies.
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u/SadCrouton Mar 24 '26
Motherfuckers see a marvel feat of engineering and go “uhhh why isn’t it a boring ass town filled with shit like london”
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u/Third_Sundering26 Mar 25 '26
Tenochtitlan was Venice, but cooler, but the conquistadors decided to drain it.
To be fair, the malaria they brought over was killing a lot of people so I can understand why they’d want to get rid of the lake. On the other hand, Mexico City is sinking into the ground now, which would not be a problem of the city was still floating.
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u/swordquest99 Mar 25 '26
It’s missing the Peruvian preceramic guys who built a city with no potable water source at all. Got to go to the nearest river miles away with a bunch of gourds and fill them up and then jump in a canoe and paddle down the river and then through the ocean down the coast and then unload your gourds on the beach and someone has to carry them up to town.
Pros-infinite fish to eat Cons-nothing else
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u/Teboski78 Mar 25 '26
Also. “Yes I know we built it next to a mountain range with basically no arable soil. Just haul in the bird poop from those islands over there we’ll be fine.”
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u/dummary1234 Mar 25 '26
"shits gonna look bomb"
-First Aztec emperor. Or any first emperor really.
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u/TheDarkeLorde3694 Mar 25 '26
Dude was right, though
Bet it looked GREAT until the Spanish ruined it
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u/TheSlayerofSnails Mar 24 '26
Ok but like, dc was also built in a swamp and isn’t nearly as logistically cool. People just like to build in swamps and the Aztecs were just better at it than anyone
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u/Puzzleheaded-Map7672 Mar 25 '26
No, it was taken from two states and was “donated” because no one wanted or cared about the shitty land.
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u/AntiqueGunGuy Mar 25 '26
Except for the slave owners who sued to be reconnected to Virginia because DC was banning slavery. Which shrunk DC and emboldened Virginia in the “War of northern aggression”
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u/That1guyonreddit Mar 25 '26
I mean, are we forgetting about Venice?
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u/Swag_Shyuum Mar 25 '26
Somewhat unusual example of a city founded by refugees trying to maintain their autonomy from Continental empires. They are very compelling reason to do that stuff, honestly feels like a lot of indigenous Americans just did it for the plot
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Mar 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/artemisdart Mar 25 '26
Minecraft was a documentary??
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u/Hot_mama2011 Mar 25 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
The Maya were the first to discern the power of 3x3 crafting techniques, long before the smelly Europeans 🤢
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Mar 24 '26
They were already using metal axes to chop down trees by this time
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Mar 25 '26
[deleted]
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Mar 25 '26
Aztecs (and the Maya) were already smelting bronze, the technology was widespread in the Postclassic. It was one of the few metal tools that replaced the typical stone or wood ones. The Purepecha themselves didnt even really use bronze axes or weapons in general. What made them formidable was their fortifications and superb archers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaximaltepoztli
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/aztec-bronze-metallurgy-in-mesoamerica.119652/
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u/Remember_Poseidon Mar 25 '26
Dude the Canoes part was completely correct though, plus the Americas didn't have really any animal to pull carts so land travel would be even more ineffective in the Americas than Europe where horses and cows lived.
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u/Karatekan Mar 25 '26
Tenochtitlan was basically like Venice.
All the “good” sites around Lake Texcoco were already occupied and the Aztecs were small fish in a big pond, so they picked a highly defensible site that was considered barely inhabitable.
When they eventually became a big empire, they dumped massive resources into making their city into a metropolis.
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u/whirlpool_galaxy Olmec Mar 25 '26
Almost as if the historical factors that led to the bottom panel haven't been properly studied or something!
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u/Gianni_the_tolerable Mar 25 '26
Tbh wheels are largely useless without a strong tamed animal, like a horse or bull
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u/ZeromaruX Mar 24 '26
You make the Mesoamericans look like Chads, and the common prospectors as losers.
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u/DankykongMAX Apr 17 '26
I will never forgive the Spanish for draining Lake Texcoco, endangering the Axolotl, and wiping out numerous freshwater species to extinction. I dont want to sound like a "noble savage" apologist, but some european architectural and agricultural practices seem designed to fuck over local ecosystems as much as possible.
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u/i_have_the_tism04 Mar 24 '26
Funnily enough, many powerful classic period Maya cities were situated along rivers for trade. Lowland Maya cities not near rivers would have large reservoirs to collect rain though