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Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan

(mused.com)
462 points lukehollis | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 12:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source

With these 3d captures, you can explore the 4km tunnel system that archaeologists created inside the temples at Copan that are closed to the public. The tunnels are often flooded by hurricanes and damaged by other natural forces--and collapsed on me and my Matterport scanner more than once--so this is a permanent record of how they appeared in 2022-23.

Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the Maya built their temples layer by layer outward, so to understand them, researchers tunneled into the structures to understand the earlier phases of construction. I arranged the guided versions of the virtual tours in a rough chronology, moving from the highest to the lowest and oldest areas: the hieroglyphic stairway composing the largest Maya inscription anywhere, the Rosalila temple that was buried fully intact, and finally the tomb of the Founder of the city, Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ.

I've been working to build on top of the Matterport SDK with Three.js--and then reusing the data in Unreal for a desktop experience or rendering for film (coming soon to PBS).

Blog about process: https://blog.mused.com/what-lies-beneath-digitally-recording...

Major thanks to the Matterport team for providing support with data alignment and merging tunnels while I was living in the village near site.

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gerdesj ◴[15 Oct 24 23:08 UTC] No.41854036[source]▶
Superb!

I expect whoever coated the remains with that red cinnabar stuff died rather early, probably with tooth and hair loss and severe mental issues. Perhaps this fate was expected but given that "mad hatters" were a thing until fairly recently, people can be a bit strange when it comes to dealing with poisons.

The guide notes point out that only the most sacred rituals involved this red mercurial stuff. I'm not surprised. It might be rare but rarer still will be people willing to deploy it unless that fate is considered a good way to go.

That tour is a remarkable use of the technology.

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lukehollis ◴[15 Oct 24 23:14 UTC] No.41854091[source]▶
It's something we have to be careful of while working on site! We're really careful around the rooms that have mercury in them--there are few that I didn't put in the guide also.

I was wondering about this too: they've found high levels of mercury in the water supply at Maya cities and believe now it contributed to the eventual collapse: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/mercury-and-algal-bl...

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yard2010 ◴[16 Oct 24 00:07 UTC] No.41854353[source]▶
> “The drinking and cooking water for the Tikal rulers and their elite entourage almost certainly came from the Palace and Temple Reservoirs,” wrote Lentz and his colleagues. “As a result, the leading families of Tikal likely were fed foods laced with mercury at every meal.”

This makes me think: what if today's rulers are being poisoned by something making them act like idiots?

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1. jpm_sd ◴[16 Oct 24 12:25 UTC] No.41858269[source]▶
It's called "social media"