Tourist attacked by locals after climbing forbidden Mayan temple in Mexico
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Summary
A German tourist was arrested and attacked after climbing the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico, during the spring equinox.
Video footage shows locals shouting insults and physically confronting the man as National Guard personnel detained him.
The temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is off-limits to climbers due to preservation laws and safety concerns.
Violators face fines up to $16,000 and possible prison time.
The incident occurred amid a crowd of 8,000–9,000 visitors.
Hell yeah! When you're visiting another country, you are a guest in their country and should obey their laws and rules.
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Colonialism is about extracting resources. Living in a low cost of living area on passive income attained globally is quite the opposite.
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yeah, according to our mayan guide when i was there the human sacrifices never happened... but they were extremely inconsistent with their stories and also believed that the number of days in the solar year is connected with human body through the number of joints so i wouldn't take their word for it.
when i was listening to what guides in other groups were telling about the same spots and traditions i noticed that each and every one of them had their own fantastic and completely different story and many of the things they were saying were clearly wrong (e.g. that the descent of kukulcan shadow play only happens on two particular days of the year).
Ending human sacrifice in many cultures can be seen in their more modern folklore, the Maya creation myth in the 1500s had the hero twins tricking the death gods which allowed them to avoid human sacrifice, other cultures around the same time had versions where the hero twins obeyed the death gods without tricking them. So local stories from different groups will clue you in to how they view human sacrifice historically, if you understand the context of the stories, you also have to keep in mind there's no one Maya culture, it was always diverse city states Maya is more accurately a region than a people, they're 20 some odd languages that all derived from the classical Maya spoken today in those lands, and still there are languages today that appear to not be derived from classical Maya, so there's a lot more going on than one culture or history, the powder keg situation the Spanish walked into in Tenochtitlan that allowed them to conquer the Mexica was due in part to clashing religious and cultural groups with in the Nahuatl speaking dominant groups, within the city were multiple ethnicities, languages, and cultures all coexisting, there simply isn't one story and never will be. They're are descendants of Mexica and Maya that come from groups that didn't do blood sacrifice, there's groups where this was a very rare thing to do, and there's motivations beyond what people accept, only recently are archeologists looking at temple grounds and finding remains there and realizing the remains of infants all have markers of illness or congenial problems that were likely fatal. Imagine if a cathedral was discovered by an Asian archeologist who didn't have information about the religious or cultural people who used it, and finding an attached graveyard with the remains of hundreds of elderly and infant people decided that the cathedral was a place for the elderly and infants to fight to the death to amuse their evil Gods. After all they had human skeletons in armor with weapons on display and scary ugly monsters all around the outside, and cages at the top of the building with human remains on them.
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Or, really, any stupid shit when visiting somewhere. I'd have loved it if that "influencer" that yoinked that wombat got flogged in the public square like she deserved.
Remember how a bunch of pissants from LA were damaging and even killing Joshua trees? I do, the trees still hunger for profligate blood.
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A German tourist
Sorry for not sending out best. I hope the guys wore socks in sandals at least to properly represent our national outfit.
Eh don't feel too bad, death valley will consume 10 of your countrymen by the closing of summer. Seriously there's running bets on my area about how many Germans will die and from what, safe bet is 5 from heatstroke.
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Colonialism is also about displacing native/local culture which is what a lot of these digital nomads are doing. One example I’ve seen are the digital nomads trying to stop locals from walking on the public beaches in front of their properties.
You're not a digital nomad if you own property though, or my definition of digital nomad is wrong
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Or, really, any stupid shit when visiting somewhere. I'd have loved it if that "influencer" that yoinked that wombat got flogged in the public square like she deserved.
Hang on. What?! I have to look this up now.
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Well, in 500 years it may be destroyed anyways. Isn't it a little selfish to not try and preserve it in some form for future generations?
My point is, adding a protective coating would be the opposite of preserving it.
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When pigs fly hahahahahahahahahaha wa what
Should I write those cheques to the poor now, sir?
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My point is, adding a protective coating would be the opposite of preserving it.
Yeah, I didn't mean that's the only thing that could possibly ever be done tiehr I'm not an archaeologist or whatever would be relevant.
Maybe it would be possible to just encase it is a giant glass cube, who knows. But is nothing the best thing to be doing? I'm just asking.
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You're not a digital nomad if you own property though, or my definition of digital nomad is wrong
I suppose the ability to rent or lease property is much easier for digital nomads than the locals. I think the definition is mostly about people who have the ability to just kind of go anywhere as their income isn’t tied to the local economy.
But, I don’t know. Read this article and maybe it’ll make more sense:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/digital-nomads-work-from-home-gentrification/
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Summary
A German tourist was arrested and attacked after climbing the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico, during the spring equinox.
Video footage shows locals shouting insults and physically confronting the man as National Guard personnel detained him.
The temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is off-limits to climbers due to preservation laws and safety concerns.
Violators face fines up to $16,000 and possible prison time.
The incident occurred amid a crowd of 8,000–9,000 visitors.
Lucky they didn’t get their heart cut out and show to them like in the good ol days
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Perhaps you've not visited this place, so for an impression: the area itself is very large and open and the site has restricted access with a fairly pricey admission fee.
Voices don't carry very far in this environment, however the issue is that there are literally hundreds if not close to a thousand vendors literally screaming for attention. My objection is to the authorities who have permitted this kind of presence at a heritage site. Of course locals have taken advantage of the situation, that much is very clear.
I've been there many times.
"My objection is to the authorities who have permitted this kind of presence at a heritage site"
Not allowing them would wreck the local economy. It will not happen.
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oh shit... i was there on that day! and i missed it...
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Yeah I was just thinking the same thing - it’s closed now?
All of these had to be closed off because jackasses who tried to take away a piece of the monument, or because they didn't tread well and fell down.
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Summary
A German tourist was arrested and attacked after climbing the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico, during the spring equinox.
Video footage shows locals shouting insults and physically confronting the man as National Guard personnel detained him.
The temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is off-limits to climbers due to preservation laws and safety concerns.
Violators face fines up to $16,000 and possible prison time.
The incident occurred amid a crowd of 8,000–9,000 visitors.
Good, now sacrifice him to whatever God they believe in
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I've been there many times.
"My objection is to the authorities who have permitted this kind of presence at a heritage site"
Not allowing them would wreck the local economy. It will not happen.
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How's Bali
I hear it’s infested with westerners and bogans.
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Yeah, I didn't mean that's the only thing that could possibly ever be done tiehr I'm not an archaeologist or whatever would be relevant.
Maybe it would be possible to just encase it is a giant glass cube, who knows. But is nothing the best thing to be doing? I'm just asking.
Yeah, I'm not an archaeologist either.
I've been to a few places where attempts to repair or actively preserve monuments have been made, it just never seems to go well.
We don't have skilled artisans of the techniques used, nor the workforce. Operating on a budget is kind of antithetical to building or maintaining monuments like this.
I was watching something about the NESS of brodgar recently. A fascinating Palaeolithic site completely buried. Excavations have been ongoing for several years, but now they're just going to re-bury the whole site so as to minimise any disruption. Most of the site has not yet been excavated. The thinking is, if you excavate it in 20 years time our tech will have advanced and more will be learned.
I'm just saying that steps taken to actively preserve something need to be very carefully considered and in almost all cases the solution is simply to not touch it.
