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A note from Jeff Wagg:
Barbara (Kitty) Mervine is a long-time friend of the JREF who is joining us on her second Amaz!ng Adventure. While she'll be enlightening those on board with tales of Mexican UFOs, she's taken time to point out some European assumptions concerning ancient American civilizations for those who missed the boat.
 In preparation for travelling to Mexico for the first time I have been studying up the history of Mexico and in particular the Mayan civilization. The misconception that the native people of Mexico were incapable of having such advanced skills in architecture, math and astronomy started long before the Erich von Däniken wrote his infamous "Chariot of the Gods" book. When sixteenth- century Spanish historians wrote of the Mayan ruins, they concluded that the people that built the pyramids and other advanced architectural structures were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Cotton Mather, William Penn and Roger Williams were all supporters of what was called the "Jewish Theory" for Mexico. Other theories to explain how such an advanced civilization ended up in Mexico include the Mayans being survivors of a lost continent such as Atlantis. In recent times we have space aliens coming to both Egypt and Central and South America to build landing pads and pyramids, and pass on their wisdom.
James Randi, and other skeptics, have long been vocal critics of these theories. But I was surprised to discover that there was another early skeptic, at times a voice of reason in a wilderness of prejudice, named John Lloyd Stevens. Stevens, known as "the father of Mayan archeology" who wrote in 1840 in his book "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan" "The works of these people are different from the works of any other known people; they are of a new order, and entirely and absolutely anomalous: they stand alone."
He added (bolding mine):
Unless I am wrong, we have a conclusion far more interesting and wonderful than that of connecting the builders of these cities with the architecture, sculpture and drawing, and beyond doubt in other more perishable arts...not derived from the Old World, but originating and growing up here, without models or masters, having a distinct, separate, independent existence: like the plants and fruits of the soul, indigenous
In other words, the people of Mexico did it all by themselves.
He also had something to say about the still popular belief that somehow the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico are somehow culturally (or paranormally) tied together:
The pyramid form is one which suggests itself to human intelligence in every country as the simplest and surest mode of erecting a high structure upon a solid foundation. It cannot be regarded as a ground for assigning a common origin to all people among whom structures of that character are found unless the similarity is preserved in its most striking features.
(Jeff notes: the Luxor casino in Las Vegas has a Mayan pyramind inside, and their expansion towers are shaped vaguely like step pyramids.)
As a preschool teacher I would add I have seen countless preschoolers building pyramids because it is the most stable shape to build. In a way, a pyramid is a building that already has fallen down!
And so I salute John Lloyd Stevens: a skeptic that even back in 1840 understood that the people of Mexico were the geniuses behind the great Mayan culture. His firm conviction that people not "white Europeans" were capable of such an advanced culture put his at odds with most of his peers.
The spirit of John Lloyd Stevens, and even modern skeptics, is reflected in another bit of his writing:
We live in an age whose spirit is to discard phantasms and arrive at truth, and the interest lost in one particular is supplied in another scarcely inferior.
The truth can be as interesting if not more so than the mistaken misconception. Even today sadly, with the Mayans, these misconceptions are still often based on prejudice rather than reason.
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In this case, what natural occurring "thing" in all the world does a pyramid most resemble? Taking a moment and forgetting what it is and what it's supposed to be used for... does it not look like a mountain? Let's look further and see how we as humans without the advent of modern technology would make a mountain where we want a mountain to be. Even today, the first thing we would do is MOVE THE MOUNTAIN. So that means... use STONE!
Then as every new development in all of human history shows... you don't start with the final product you start by experimenting. This will lead to the simple conclusion that starting with the bottom and working your way up layer by layer is better than building it from side to side. There is after all only a handful of ways to build anything... from the inside out, from one side to the other, top to bottom, or a combination such as from top to bottom and inside to outside.
If you stop and think about it for a moment. If you want to create a man-made mountain no matter how you construct it, does it not seem pyramid-ish anyways. The only difference comes at the end when it comes to ornamentation and decoration. I mean even if you take a pile of sand and let it pile in one place... you get a mound which is a representation of a mountain which looks roughly like a pyramid... it all shares similar elements.
Of course the fact a pyramid is square is also simply a matter of practicality. Cutting round things is more difficult than cutting square ones. Even today, to make something round we usually start with something more square or rectangular. It's even done for the same reason... it's just easier. As shown by many, many experiments using water, fire, wood, etc. Stones vein in relatively straight lines and layers. So breaking them on those layers and strata will create a relatively square-ish object anyways. Why take a massive amount of time making it round when you can just make it square. If you're going to make it square... then why not make the whole thing square in the first place... just so much easier in the end.
Of course... this doesn't account for why anyone would want to make a man-made mountain in the first place. This is easily understood under two different ideas. 1) Any culture that existed around mountains always viewed mountains as the place of the gods... after all the tops we're much closer to the gods than the people at the bottom of the mountains were. 2) To show supremacy over your people (as every culture has shown) you need to be associated or connected to the gods. What better way to do that than building your very own mountain? The fact it was a square mountain... that just shows you are different from the gods even though were still equal to them (so that can fit for that reason too).
I will leave it to the experts to debate such things further... but doesn't that just seem like such a simpler and easier idea to understand? Why would we need them to be landing pads for spaceships?
Anyways... that's my opinion on the subject.