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The Mayan Market
From the New York Times:
Scientists using improved methods of analyzing the chemistry of ancient soils have detected where a large marketplace stood 1,500 years ago in a Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.Also:
The findings, archaeologists say, are some of the first strong evidence that the ancient Maya civilization, at least in places and at certain times, had a market economy similar in some respects to societies today. The conventional view has been that food and other goods in Maya cities were distributed through taxation and tributes controlled by the ruling class.
Dr. Dahlin was the lead author of a report on the discovery in the current issue of the journal Latin American Antiquity. Richard E. Terry, who conducted the tests, is a soil biochemist at Brigham Young University and an expert in the analysis of soils at archaeological sites.I'm always glad to see BYU represented well. As to the elephant in the room--does this have any bearing on the Book of Mormon?--I don't really know. I guess at face value it looks somewhat supportive, but I don't know enough context to comment knowledgeably.
4 comments:
An article published in JBMS many years ago comes to mind:
The Marketplace
Thanks, Justin. If I weren't so lazy I might have found that.
Thanks, Justin, for the link to the Maxwell Institute article. After reading the article and thinking about the last paragraph, I'm skeptical about the importance of marketplaces in Mesoamerica to the Book of Mormon.
"Again, we find the small details in the Book of Mormon consistent with modern-day findings. In addition, this easily overlooked yet very significant information lends credence to the modern-day placement of the Book of Mormon city of Zarahemla in Mesoamerica."
I'm the first to admit that I'm pretty naive about civilizations, but I would expect that any larger city anywhere would have marketplaces. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe marketplaces in larger cities are unique to the Mideast and Mesoamerica. But, on the surface, it seems that marketplaces are just a parallel between Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon, and I don't give much credence to parallels.
In anyone knows of information about marketplaces (or the lack of them) in other civilizations, I'll appreciate getting the links.
When I look at the Book of Mormon it seemed construction technology revolved around earth, timber and metallargy. Unfortunately not of these materials, other than gold, hold up in a wet tropical environment.
It wasn't until the end of the Nephite civilization that cities in the north developed the technology to build with stone and cement.
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