Mindy Weisberger reported earlier this week on a pyramid in San Andrés in El Salvador, now ascertained as built from the rock spewed out by Tierra Blanca Joven at Ilopango. (h/t Saraceni.) Akira Ichikawa (Ichikawa Akira is his manga name, don't call him that), over the ridge in Boulder, has the full report.
We'll start positive: I agree with that much. I've mused last year that Ilopango crippled the Xinca locals. The big winners in the area would be the less-affected peoples to the north, west, and east: of which, the Maya had the population-density, technology, and warcraft to benefit most. Here, Ichikawa notes Copán as in the sweet-spot, able to extrude at least an embassy to the incoming Maya if not a full colony. It is nice to have physical contemporary evidence, supplanting the circumstantial evidence of highland-Maya (and Pipil) showing up later and sidelining the Xinca; where the literate Quiché, Aztecs, and Spaniards would find 'em.
And I can go either way on when the stone was quarried and assembled to make this pyramid. If they say, after the Maya Hiatus; I am fine with that. That this was before Loma Caldera AD 620, seems beyond dispute; San Andrés seems actually to have become a regional powerhouse after that one. As to why Saint Andrew keeps getting pinned with horrible geologic events... ask a better Catholic.
Where we disagree, is on the dating of the volcano itself. Ichikawa (still) thinks the volcano caused the Hiatus, and all the other unpleasantness of Justinian's reign not directly inflicted by that tyrant himself. Last I heard was from Victoria Smith in Oxford, that Ilopango went up in AD 431. And ooh looky, "Smith" isn't cited in Ichikawa's paper.
Chalk another fail for Boulder, along with Brakenridge. People over there don't believe in reading papers that disagree with them apparently. But hey: Boulder. I'm more irritated with the journals publishing them. Who's peer-reviewing this stuff?
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