REUTERS/Argely
Salazar
Archaeologists uncovered 60,000 previously unknown
Mayan structures deep in the
Guatemalan
jungle using state-of-art
laser technology.
The find could completely rewrite what we know about
the Mayan civilization.
Archaeologists are extremely excited.
Using state-of-the-art laser technology, archaeologists uncovered
over 60,000 previously unknown Mayan structures deep in the
Guatemalan jungle, including foundations for houses, military
fortifications, and elevated causeways.
Archaeologists could barely contain their excitement about the
ground-breaking find.
"I think this is one of the greatest advances in over 150
years of Maya archaeology," Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at
Brown University with decades of experience studying Mesoamerican
cultures told the
BBC.
"I know it sounds hyperbolic but when I saw the imagery, it
did bring tears to my eyes," he added.
"This is HOLY $HIT
territory," Sarah Parcak, a professor of archaeology at the
University of Alabama and a National Geographic fellow who was
not involved in the project, tweeted.
"We'll need 100 years to go through all [the data] and
really understand what we're seeing," Francisco
Estrada-Belli, a Tulane University archaeologist, told
National Geographic.
REUTERS/Bernardo
Montoya
Lidar technology is a game-changer for
archaeologists
Lidar, the technology used by the researchers to uncover
the structures, uses millions of laser pulses to detect
structures underneath the dense jungle foliage that are almost
invisible to the naked eye. The instrument is mounted on
aircraft, like a light airplane or a helicopter, and the
wavelengths of light are measured as they bounce back — much like
a ship uses sonar to gauge depth.
These signals are then used to produce detailed,
three-dimensional topographic maps of the ground underneath
the jungle's vegetation and layers of sediment. Skilled
observers can pick out manmade structures, and further analysis
can tell the researchers the size of the structure, and when it
may have been built in order to build a detailed timeline of
Mayan history. And, it saves a lot of time trudging around the
jungle. In decades of examining these sites in the remote Petén
region of Guatemala, archaeologists didn't have a clue these
structures were right beneath their feet.
The structures uncovered by the team suggest that instead
of living in isolated city-states, the Mayans controlled huge
territories with millions of people, industrial-scale food
production, and sophisticated trade networks — on the scale of
Ancient Greece or Rome.
The Mayan civilization could have had millions more
inhabitants than archaeologists previously thought
Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist on the project, believes
the findings indicate that previous population estimates for the
Mayans were "grossly underestimated," and could, in fact, be more
than three or four times what researchers previously thought,
according to the BBC.
Some of the structures the archaeologists discovered were
hiding in plain sight. Garrison described how he came 150 feet
away from one of the fortresses discovered by the Lidar scan on
an excavation mission in 2010, but never found it. The Lidar
images also showed a seven-story pyramid that had practically
been swallowed by the jungle's vegetation.
REUTERS/Bernardo
Montoya
"With this new data it’s no longer unreasonable to think
that there were 10 to 15 million people there — including many
living in low-lying, swampy areas that many of us had thought
uninhabitable," Francisco Estrada-Belli, the lead researcher
on the project, told National Geographic.
At the Mayan civilization's zenith, some 1,500 years ago,
emissaries from different cities may have used the elevated
causeways to trade goods like corn, or even for military
conquest. The researchers found evidence that the Mayans had
expertly altered the landscape to control the flow of
precipitation to water crops and keep floodwaters from
damaging buildings.
Other archaeologists on the project waxed more poetic about
the way the find could rewrite what we know about where advanced
societies first flourished.
"We’ve had this western conceit that complex civilizations
can’t flourish in the tropics, that the tropics are where
civilizations go to die," Marcello Canuto, a Tulane University
archaeologist told National Geographic.
"We now have to consider that complex societies may have
formed in the tropics and made their way outward from there," he
added.
The National Geographic Channel is airing a one-hour
special about the Lidar finds, called "Lost Treasures of the Maya
Snake Kings," on February 6 at 9 p.m.
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