Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Laser Scans Reveal Maya "Megalopolis" Below Guatemalan Jungle


In a discovery that’s being hailed as a major breakthrough in Maya archaeology, researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that were hidden for centuries under the jungles of Central America.

The vast, interconnected network of ancient cities in what is now northern Guatemala was home to millions more people than previously thought.

Scholars used a revolutionary technology known as LiDAR (short for “Light Detection and Ranging”), to digitally remove the tree canopy from aerial images of the now-unpopulated landscape, revealing the ruins of a sprawling pre-Columbian civilization that was far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed.

“The LiDAR images make it clear that this entire region was a settlement system whose scale and population density had been grossly underestimated,” said Thomas Garrison, an Ithaca College archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer who specializes in using digital technology for archaeological research.

Read the full story here.

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