New 7 wonders of world??

[freeby4me]

What do you think of this?? I dont think we need "new wonders" especially since 6 are gone.

GENEVA, Switzerland - The Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome and Peru's Machu Picchu are leading contenders to be among the new seven wonders of the world, as a massive poll draws to a close with votes already cast by more than 90 million people, organizers say.

As the 8 p.m. EDT Friday voting deadline approaches, the rankings can still change. Also in the top 10 are the Acropolis in Greece, Chichen Itza pyramid in Mexico, Eiffel Tower in Paris, Easter Island, Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Taj Mahal in India and Jordan's ancient city of Petra.

The winners will be announced on Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Great Pyramids of Giza are the only surviving structures from the traditional list of seven wonders of the ancient world. That list was derived from lists of marvels compiled by ancient Greek observers, the best known being Antipater of Sidon, a writer in the 2nd century B.C.

The pyramids have been assured of keeping their status in addition to the new seven wonders after indignant Egyptian officials said it was a disgrace they had to compete for a spot.

The final round of the competition narrowed the field to 20 candidates, and people from every country in the world voted by Internet or phone, said the group organizing the ballot.

"It's so exciting," said Tia B. Viering, spokeswoman for the "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign. "There are not many things that could bring the world together like global culture ... this is really something that every single person in the world can be interested in."

"This is all about bringing people together, to appreciate each other ... to celebrate diversity," Viering said.

The Colosseum, the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, Taj Mahal and Petra have been among the leaders since January, while the Acropolis and Christ the Redeemer statue made their way up from the middle of the field to the top level, according to latest tallies.

The Statue of Liberty and Sydney Opera House have been sitting in the bottom 10 since the start. Also faring poorly are Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex, Russia's Kremlin building and St. Basil's Cathedral, Britain's Stonehenge and the city of Timbuktu in Mali.

The ancient city of Petra in southwestern Jordan — famous for its water tunnels and stone structures carved in the rock — jumped from the middle of the pack to the top seven in January. That was largely thanks to campaigning by the Jordanian royal family and thousands of Jordanians voting by text message over their mobile phones, Viering said.

A surge in voting from the United States, Canada and Europe in recent weeks helped those regions catch up with Latin America and Asia to make the ballot truly global, Viering said.

The campaign was begun in 1999 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with almost 200 nominations from around the world. The list of candidates was narrowed down to 21 by the start of 2006, then Giza was taken out of the running when it was given an automatic spot. Since organizers started a tour to each site last September, the competition has been heating up.

There is no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favorite wonder, but most of the votes are cast by Internet in a system that registers each participant's e-mail address to discourage people from voting twice, Viering said.

"We have a lot of kids (voting) and that trend is continuing ... but we have votes really from every part of the population," she added.

The original list of wonders were concentrated in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Six of them no longer exist: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria.

After the Egyptian protest, the organizers of the campaign set the pyramids above the competition.

"We absolutely had no problem with this," Viering said. As of Saturday, there will be eight world wonders including the Pyramids of Giza, she said.

Choosing world wonders has been a fascination over the centuries. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, keeps updating its list of World Heritage Sites, which now totals 851 places. The agency, however, is not involved in the New 7 Wonders project.

Weber's Switzerland-based foundation aims to promote cultural diversity by supporting, preserving and restoring monuments. It relies on private donations and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.

[dv8grl]

http://www.new7wonders.com/

I can barely remember what the "old" wonders are / were, I know the gardens of Babylon was one of them., but I always thought the Grand Canyon was one as well.

The statues of Easter Island and Stonehenge should definately be on the list.

The Sydney Opera, Eiffel Tower & the Staute of Libery shouldn't be on the list at all IMO., whats so WONDEROUS about them?

[PrincessArky]

http://www.new7wonders.com/

I can barely remember what the "old" wonders are / were, I know the gardens of Babylon was one of them., but I always thought the Grand Canyon was one as well.


I'm with you I always thought the Grand Canyon was one too

[jedmatters]

The NEW wonders of the world must be human made...

That was the top requirement.
The original ones had some non-manmade items, like the hanging gardens of Babylon..

[Jolie Rouge]

New wonders of the world named after online poll
By Axel Bugge
Sat Jul 7, 10:09 PM ET

LISBON (Reuters) - The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan and Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer are among the modern day seven wonders of the world chosen in a poll of 100 million online voters, organizers said on Saturday.

The other four are Peru's Machu Picchu, the mountain settlement that symbolizes the Inca empire, Mexico's Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, the Colosseum in Rome and the Taj Mahal in India.

The seven winners were announced at a glitzy show at the Benfica stadium in Lisbon after what is likely to be the biggest online poll at www.new7wonders.com.

"Never before in history have so many people participated in a global decision," actress Hilary Swank said at the presentation.

The ancient seven wonders of the world all existed more than 2,000 years ago and were all in the Mediterranean region. Only one remains standing today -- the Pyramids of Giza.

The originals were selected by one man, believed by many to be ancient Greek writer Antipater of Sidon.

The New 7 Wonders of the World organizers say the contest was a chance to level the global cultural playing field and recognize the achievements of societies outside Europe and the Middle East.

Only one European site, the Colosseum, was picked. The Eiffel Tower and the Acropolis had also been contenders. "I am happy that for the first time in history the world was able to vote and decide," said Jose Freitas do Amaral, commissioner of the New 7 Wonders of the World and Portugal's former foreign minister.

GLITZY PRESENTATION

Many Portuguese enjoying the glitzy presentation, which included break-dancing and singing by tenor Jose Carreras and pop star Jennifer Lopez, backed the choice of new wonders. "I think this event is very important. It's important to give a chance to other historical monuments," said 60-year-old Ivone Caroca.

At Chichen Itza, in Rio de Janeiro and in Peru -- the three winners in Latin America -- people cheered, danced and applauded when their sites were selected. "They asked me to tell you that the Christ is now a wonder," lead singer of Brazilian band O Rappa, Marcelo Falcao, said in the middle of the Live Earth concert on Copacabana beach, prompting wild cheering and exchanges of hugs in the crowd.

At Chichen Itza, 26-year-old engineering student Alberto Jimenez jumped with joy together with hundreds of others. "This archaeological recognition is a great achievement for the whole country," he said.

Critics, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), have said world wonders should not be chosen in a popular vote.

In the Lisbon audience, 62-year-old Antonio Catarino was upset because no Catholic cathedrals or churches were included. "I find it unforgivable that there aren't any in the voting," he said.

The New 7 Wonders organization, established by Swiss-Canadian adventurer Bernard Weber, will use half its revenues to fund restoration efforts worldwide, including recreating the Bamiyan Buddha statue in Afghanistan.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070708/ts_nm/portugal_wonders_dc;_ylt=AkySs9aHWNTJnf849Dirpvus0 NUE

[Jolie Rouge]

The original ones had some non-manmade items, like the hanging gardens of Babylon..

The Hanging Gardens were very much "man-made"

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also known as Hanging Gardens of Semiramis) and the walls of Babylon (near present-day Al Hillah in Iraq) are considered one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. They were built by Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BC. He is reported to have constructed the gardens to please his wife, Amytis of Media, who longed for the trees and beautiful plants of her homeland. They were destroyed in an earthquake after the 1st century BC.

The Greek Historian Strabo:

"Babylon, too, lies in a plain; and the circuit of its wall is three hundred and eighty-five stadia. The thickness of its wall is thirty-two feet; the height thereof between the towers is fifty cubits; that of the towers is sixty cubits; and the passage on top of the wall is such that four-horse chariots can easily pass one another; and it is on this account that this and the hanging garden are called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The garden is quadrangular in shape, and each side is four plethra in length. It consists of arched vaults, which are situated, one after another, on checkered, cube-like foundations. The checkered foundations, which are hollowed out, are covered so deep with earth that they admit of the largest of trees, having been constructed of baked brick and asphalt — the foundations themselves and the vaults and the arches. The ascent to the uppermost terrace-roofs is made by a stairway; and alongside these stairs there were screws, through which the water was continually conducted up into the garden from the Euphrates by those appointed for this purpose. For the river, a stadium in width, flows through the middle of the city; and the garden is on the bank of the river."[1]

The Greek Historian Diodorus:

"The Garden was 100 feet long by 100 wide and built up in tiers so that it resembled a theater. Vaults had been constructed under the ascending terraces which carried the entire weight of the planted garden; the uppermost vault, which was seventy-five feet high, was the highest part of the garden, which, at this point, was on the same level as the city walls. The roofs of the vaults which supported the garden were constructed of stone beams some sixteen feet long, and over these were laid first a layer of reeds set in thick tar, then two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and finally a covering of lead to prevent the moisture in the soil penetrating the roof. On top of this roof enough topsoil was heaped to allow the biggest trees to take root. The earth was leveled off and thickly panted with every kind of tree. And since the galleries projected one beyond the other, where they were sunlit, they contained conduits for the water which was raised by pumps in great abundance from the river, though no one outside could see it being done."[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon


"Wonderous" - Indeed !

[YankeeMary]

My youngest seemed a bit upset by this today, not sure why? Will have to discuss it with him tomorrow. Thanks for the post, no I have an idea as to what he was talking about...lol. I hate when my kids are smarter then me, which seems quite often as they are teens and know everything...haha.

[WildDaisy]

I think it sucks. Why did they have to change it? The original 7 wonders of the World were fine!
Seems like they are always trying to change everything. Pluto isn't a planet, 7 wonders, next thing they will change the name of Earth to something lame.. lol.. ;)

[dv8grl]

I dont mind the change. These are the "NEW" and we still have the "OLD" or as I prefer to call them the "ORIGINAL". ;)

The new 7 are not bad and definately deserve the honors for sure., even if they were "man-made". I still would have liked the Easter Island stautes & Stonehenge on the list.. but then again.. YOU CAN'T PROVE THAT THEY WERE "man-made"..... maybe "alien-made" :pray

[Jolie Rouge]

Wonders of the World
Tue Jul 10, 12:20 AM ET

In a sort of global American Idol, people around the world have cast 100 million votes for an updated 7 Wonders of the World.

The results — announced Saturday in an Oscar-worthy ceremony hosted by actors Ben Kingsley and Hilary Swank in Lisbon, Portugal — were a few centuries overdue: Of the ancient Greeks' original list of wonders, only the Egyptian pyramids still stand. They are joined by the new seven: India's Taj Mahal, the Chichén Itzá ruins in Mexico, the Great Wall of China, Peru's Machu Pichu, the Petra tombs in Jordan, the Coloseum in Italy and the statue of Christ Redeemer in Brazil.

Yes, we know. The whole thing was basically a publicity stunt cooked up by a Swiss filmmaker. The balloting, much like that for Idol, was open to manipulation. People could vote early and often by text message (though only once by e-mail). There was no Simon Cowell dissing candidates, but some governments tried to game the outcome.

India, for example, used a Bollywood diva to promote the Taj Mahal. Brazil's president launched a get-out-the-vote campaign for Rio's statue of Christ Redeemer and gave people free text messages. Had the United States made a similar effort, perhaps the Statue of Liberty would have made it to the final seven from the roster of 20 finalists.

The United Nations wouldn't have anything to do with the contest. It cited the lack of rigorous expertise and sniffed that the voting wasn't democratic because so many people in the world lack Internet access.

All true enough. But the critics come across like the people who look down their noses at the notion of allowing fans to vote for the starting lineups in tonight's Major League Baseball all-star game. All the fun is in the debate over who's best, which is too important to be left to the so-called experts.

For all its flaws, the "Wonders of the World" effort was a welcome reminder of mankind's awe-inspiring creativity in an age when the international stage seems dominated by terrorism and violence. Like the best-selling 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, it is likely to boost tourism and financial support for the chosen landmarks.

Perhaps most significantly, the poll demonstrated how technology is turning Earth into an electronic village. That millions of people around the globe can use the Internet for an exercise in participatory voting is a true wonder of the modern world.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070710/cm_usatoday/wondersoftheworld;_ylt=AjZHNgVTpG6ONjoHMJZ1VY78B2Y D

[YankeeMary]

I dont mind the change. These are the "NEW" and we still have the "OLD" or as I prefer to call them the "ORIGINAL". ;)

The new 7 are not bad and definately deserve the honors for sure., even if they were "man-made". I still would have liked the Easter Island stautes & Stonehenge on the list.. but then again.. YOU CAN'T PROVE THAT THEY WERE "man-made"..... maybe "alien-made" :pray

:beamup

[Jolie Rouge]

I still would have liked the Easter Island stautes & Stonehenge on the list.. but then again.. YOU CAN'T PROVE THAT THEY WERE "man-made"..... maybe "alien-made"


Giant statues reveal red hat secrets
Mon Sep 7, 1:41 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – British archaeologists said Monday they believe they have solved the ancient mystery of how the giant stone statues on Easter Island acquired distinctive red hats.

The researchers said the key to the mystery lies in their discovery of a road on the tiny Pacific island.

The hats were built in a quarry hidden inside the crater of an ancient volcano, and then rolled by hand or on tree logs to the site of the statues, said the team from the University of Manchester and University College, London.

The archaeologists examined the way the hats, each weighing several tons and made of red scoria, a pumice-like volcanic rock, were moved by Polynesians between 500 and 750 years ago.

They were placed on the heads of carved stone human figures known as moai standing on ceremonial platforms which encircle the island's coastline.

But the riddle of how they were raised and attached remains unsolved.

Dr. Colin Richards from the University of Manchester said: "We now know that the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust with a raised pavement along one side.

"It is likely that they were moved by hand, but tree logs could also have been used."

Dr. Sue Hamilton, of University College, London, said: "The hat quarry is inside the crater of an ancient volcano and on its outer lip. A third of the crater has been quarried away by hat production.

"So far we have located more than 70 hats at the ceremonial platforms and in transit. Many more may have been broken up and incorporated into the platforms."

Richards said there was evidence the quarry, known locally as Puna Pau, had previously produced statues before changing to hats.

"Initially the Polynesians built the moai out of various types of local stone, including the Puna Pau scoria, but between 12,000 to 13,000 AD, Puna Pau switched from producing statues to hats.

"The change correlated with an increase in the overall size of the statues across the island."



http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090907/wl_uk_afp/britainchilescienceresearch

[Jolie Rouge]

Timbuktu tomb destroyers pulverise Islam's history
By Pascal Fletcher | Reuters – Tue, Jul 3, 2012

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/8WhMe_yZNwF8dnNMUgyxOg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zMDA7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_ZA/News/Reuters/2012-07-03T152045Z_1_AJOE86216MN00_RTROPTP_2_OZATP-MALI-CRISIS-TIMBUKTU-20120703.JPG
A traditional mud structure stands in the Malian city of Timbuktu May 15, 2012. Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes began destroying prized mausoleums of saints in the UNESCO-listed northern city of Timbuktu on June 30, 2012 in front of shocked locals, witnesses said. The Islamist Ansar Dine group backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam idolatrous.

(Reuters) - The al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters who have used pick-axes, shovels and hammers to shatter earthen tombs and shrines of local saints in Mali's fabled desert city of Timbuktu say they are defending the purity of their faith against idol worship.

But historians say their campaign of destruction in the UNESCO-listed city is pulverising part of the history of Islam in Africa, which includes a centuries-old message of tolerance.

"They are striking at the heart of what Timbuktu stands for ... Mali and the world are losing a lot," Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a professor at New York's Columbia University and an expert on Islamic philosophy in Africa, told Reuters.

Over the last three days, Islamists of the Ansar Dine rebel group which in April seized Mali's north along with Tuareg separatists destroyed at least eight Timbuktu mausoleums and several tombs, centuries-old shrines reflecting the local Sufi version of Islam in what is known as the "City of 333 Saints".

For centuries in Timbuktu, an ancient Saharan trading depot for salt, gold and slaves which developed into a famous seat of Islamic learning and survived occupations by Tuareg, Bambara, Moroccan and French invaders, local people have worshipped at the shrines, seeking the intercession of the holy individuals.

This kind of popular Sufi tradition of worship is anathema to Islamists like the Ansar Dine fighters - Defenders of the Faith - who adhere to Salafism, which is linked to the Wahhabi puritanical branch of Sunni Islam found in Saudi Arabia.

"A Salafi would say that creating a culture of saints is akin to idol-worshipping," Diagne said. Unlike Christianity, where the clergy formally confers sainthood, the veneration of "saints" in various, non-Wahhabi, strands of Islam largely arises from popular reverence for pious historical figures.

Rejecting a wave of outrage inside and outside Mali against the shrine destructions, an Ansar Dine spokesman in Timbuktu, Sanda Ould Boumama, defiantly told French radio RFI at the weekend that the actions were in line with the group's aim of installing sharia Islamic law across all of divided Mali.

"Human beings cannot be elevated higher than God ... When the Prophet entered Mecca, he said that all the mausoleums should be destroyed. And that's what we're repeating," Boumama said.

In what she called a "cry from the heart" for world help to halt the destruction, Malian Culture Minister Diallo Fadima Toure told a UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in St. Petersburg on Sunday that Ansar Dine's depredations had "nothing to do with Islam, a religion of peace and tolerance".

"Are we just going to let this go and stand and watch? Today this is happening in Mali, tomorrow where will it be?".

"CRIME AGAINST HISTORY"

Experts are comparing the Timbuktu tomb destructions to similar attacks against Sufi shrines by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year. The attacks also recall al Qaeda attacks on Shi'ite shrines in Iraq in the past decade and the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

"It's against everybody and everything," said University of Cape Town Professor Shamil Jeppie, an expert on Timbuktu who co-edited with Diagne a 2008 study, "The Meanings of Timbuktu", on the city's priceless archaeology and ancient manuscripts.

Mali's government in the capital Bamako about 1,000 km (600 miles) south has condemned the attacks, but is powerless to halt them after its army was routed by rebels in April. It is still struggling to bolster a return to civilian rule after a March 22 coup that emboldened the rebel uprising further north.

Some believe the tomb-wrecking onslaught by Ansar Dine, which is led by Tuareg chieftain turned Salafist Iyad Ag Ghali, may have been directly triggered by UNESCO's decision on Thursday to accept the Mali government's urgent request to put Timbuktu on a list of endangered World Heritage sites.

"That is meaningless to Ansar Dine; what is UNESCO to them?" said Jeppie. Just as northern Nigerian Islamist militants are carrying out bloody bombings and shootings under the name Boko Haram (which broadly means "Western education is sinful"), so Ansar Dine's fighters may see UNESCO as an emblem of Western heresy.

"They are not scholars; they are foot soldiers," added Jeppie, adding they were probably unaware that Timbuktu, which was an alluring mirage of exoticism and remoteness for 19th-century European explorers, represented multiple and varied layers of Islamic tradition deposited like sand over centuries.

Its long history had tracked the turbulent rise and fall of the great African empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai.

"Timbuktu was sacked many times before," said Jeppie.

"But we have had no events of destruction of monuments, mosques and tombs. It never happened before."

The UNESCO ambassadors meeting in St. Petersburg on Tuesday joined Malian Culture Minister Toure in appealing to global governments and organisations and "all people of goodwill" to act to prevent the prevent the destruction of the Timbuktu monuments by "vandals".

"We consider this action to be a crime against history," the appeal said.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee called on the agency's director general, Irina Bokova, who has already roundly condemned the Timbuktu damage, to create a special fund to help Mali preserve its cultural patrimony from attack. It asked UNESCO members and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to provide financial resources for this fund.

PURITY OVER POPULARITY?

Just as gold-hungry 19th-century European travellers who first cast eyes on Timbuktu were disappointed to find, not glittering minarets and palaces, but a desert-rimmed cluster of dun-coloured homes and mosques, so some observers might view the city's mausoleums and tombs as modest when compared with the architectural opulence of, say, Rome or Athens or Damascus.

The rectangular local mausoleums mimic the desert earthen architecture of the city's still imposing and renowned Sankore, Sidi Yahya and Djingarei-ber mosques, the latter Timbuktu's oldest, built in mud-brick and wood in 1325.

"They are mud structures, nothing fancy at all," said Columbia University's Diagne - and so the more easily reduced to dust by the pick-axes and shovels of the Ansar Dine combatants.

But rather than visual splendour, it is what the tombs represent for Africa's history, and especially the history of Islam in Africa, than concerns historians and scholars.

They make the point that relatively few physical vestiges remain of the great Sahelian empire states that flourished and then died out centuries ago, and the damage inflicted in Timbuktu will reduce that archaeological heritage further.

They are scratching their heads as to why Ansar Dine and its well-armed allies, who hijacked a separatist uprising by local Tuareg MNLA rebels following the March coup in the Malian capital Bamako, would risk offending local sensibilities by destroying revered shrines in occupied cities like Timbuktu.

"They are more worried about purity than about being unpopular", is the explanation Diagne offers.

Scholars are also fretting about the fate of tens of thousands of ancient and brittle manuscripts, some from the 13th century, housed in libraries and private collections in Timbuktu. Academics say these prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance.

Days after the rebels took Timbuktu, local academics, librarians and citizens were hiding away the manuscripts to stop them being damaged or looted.

Jeppie said researchers had since fled the city. Some collectors had smuggled their rarest documents out to Bamako.

Diagne said the biggest fear was that historic manuscripts and artefacts would become the object of looting and trafficking for profit - just another trading commodity in the trackless Sahara, where trafficking in drugs, arms and migrants has replaced the old caravans of slaves, salt and gold.

He found it deeply ironic that the Ansar Dine tomb destroyers, who said they were upholding the name of Islam, were ignoring and denying through their acts the rich layered history and geographical spread of this great global religion.

Noting the role Sufi believers played in spreading Islam beyond its Arabian heartland, Diagne said: "If it had not been for the Sufi orders, Islam would have been a local religion."

http://news.yahoo.com/timbuktu-tomb-destroyers-pulverise-islams-history-151747822.html

[Jolie Rouge]

This teenager spent three years mapping the brightest stars in constellations to major Mayan cities—a technique that no person has ever used before. Now 15-years-old, the teen may have just made a major discovery.


Teen uses Google Maps to discover ancient Mayan site
Unfortunately, the driving directions are pretty beastly.
David Grossman, PopularMechanics.com
Updated 4:11 pm, Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Next time you think there's nothing left to explore—that GPS and satellites have already discovered everything on Earth—just think about the 15-year-old kid from Canada who discovered an ancient Mayan city, The Fire Mouth.

It sounds like a reboot of Indiana Jones, one where a kid is able take raw data from satellite imagery and put it in crucial context. William Gadoury, 15, became obsessed with Mayan history after the endless media drumbeat over the predictions of the end of the world in 2012. Gadoury's discoveries appear to be the only worthwhile development stemming from that cesspool of clickbait. Gadoury became curious as to why the Mayans lived where they did, often removed from natural options like rivers. He started to focus on twenty-two Mayan constellations and began to wonder if there any correlation with the placement of Mayan cities in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador.

He had solid grounds for his theory: Mayans placed a heavy emphasis on astrology, the idea that the stars directly effect life on Earth. They would use astrological signs to determine farming cycles, so it stands to reason that the signs could influence where Mayans would want to live. Gadoury started to map out the constellations and noticed that they corresponded with 117 known Mayan cities. Then he decided to add a twenty-third constellation to his map.


http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Teen-uses-Google-Maps-to-discover-ancient-mayan-7450416.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Teen-uses-Google-Maps-to-discover-ancient-mayan-7450416.php

The twenty-third constellation was a small one, only three stars. But Gadoury, using Google Maps and later images from the Canadian Space Agency, was able to determine that a 118th city should correspond to it. He plugged in the appropriate coordinates, you can see what he found above. Dr. Armand LaRocque, a remote sensing specialist from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, who is working with Gadoury, believes it is a Mayan pyramid surrounded by thirty smaller structures. "Geometric shapes, such as squares or rectangles, appeared in these images, forms that can hardly be attributed to natural phenomenon," LaRocque said, and it's hard to argue with that. Gadoury chose the name Fire Mouth.

Still, all the evidence lays with satellite imagery—no one has actually explored the location Gadoury spotted on Google Maps. "It's always about money," says Dr. LaRocque, bringing to light the stark contrast between the costs of physical expeditions and digital ones. Funds are currently being raised to get Gadoury to Brazil's Expo-Sciences International, where one hopes he'll be able to direct his ample abilities towards networking and finding someone willing make their way Fire Mouth.


The twenty-third constellation was a small one, only three stars. But Gadoury, using Google Maps and later images from the Canadian Space Agency, was able to determine that a 118th city should correspond to it. He plugged in the appropriate coordinates, you can see what he found above. Dr. Armand LaRocque, a remote sensing specialist from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, who is working with Gadoury, believes it is a Mayan pyramid surrounded by thirty smaller structures. "Geometric shapes, such as squares or rectangles, appeared in these images, forms that can hardly be attributed to natural phenomenon," LaRocque said, and it's hard to argue with that. Gadoury chose the name Fire Mouth.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Teen-uses-Google-Maps-to-discover-ancient-mayan-7450416.php

This article originally appeared on PopularMechanics.com http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20811/teen-uses-google-maps-to-discover-ancient-mayan-site/