arma-, armaka 'ruined site'

[Paul K. Manansala]

  Luis Gonzalez-Reimann <reimann at UCLINK.BERKELEY.EDU>

> At 09:01 AM 4/2/98 -800, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote:
>
> >But then you have civilizations like those in Mesoamerica and Ponape
> >which vanish due to geological/climatic change.
>
> Which Mesoamerican civilization are you referring to?
>
> I have always thought that a comparison between the demise of the IVC and
> the decline (not vanishing) of the Mayas of Mesoamerica could be fruitful
> and stimulating.  Our present knowledge attributes the decline of the Mayas
> to several factors, including depletion of natural resources (partly due to
> agricultural techniques) and warfare between different Maya city-states.
> The arrival of the Spanish in the 15th century dealt the final blow, but it
> is quite clear that, by then, the civilization was in decline, and many
> cities had already been abandoned and swallowed up by the jungle (or, maybe,
> I should say the rain forest).
>
> But, after the Spanish conquest, the Mayans didn't disappear.  T

I was really referring to the regions that had been abandoned.  I
really don't think the IVC people have disappeared either.  You can
still see the same type of faces displayed in IVC art in India today.
Conditions may have caused mass migrations; possibly similar to what
happened in the Holocene Sahara.

Btw, do you know what eventually happened to the Inca civilization?

>
> So here we have, in a sense, two extremes of the spectrum: In Mesoamerica
> there is plenty of archaeological information, but little textual evidence,
> while linguistics still has a lot of ground to cover (the Mayan glyphs, by
> the way, have been deciphered only recently).  In India, we have a large
> amount of textual evidence, while archaeology is only recently becoming more
> important, and linguistical studies have gone a long way (although there is,
> obviously, much more to be done).

Somewhat surprising that nothing similar to the great Mayan centers
have been found in the period between the fall of IVC and the Mauryan
empire. One would have expected the first great post-IVC urban centers to
develop in the former IVC region but instead they pop up in East India.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala