Exclusive: Laser Scans Reveal Maya "Megalopolis" Below Guatemalan Jungle

[Johane Derite]

LINK: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/

Using a revolutionary technology known as LiDAR (short for “Light Detection And Ranging”), scholars digitally removed 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.

 

[Ygorcs]

Similar techniques have been used in the Brazilian Amazon and have revealed the square-shaped remnants of long structures through very wide areas, forming what looks like a complex of long houses, i.e. towns. This discovery is also coupled with the fact that there are several pockets of jungle with an unusually high proportion of fruit trees, and also the locally famous terra preta, a very fertile piece of land in general surrouned by much poorer soil, is increasingly thought to be a non-natural part of the local geography, artificially created to become more fit to agriculture.

All of those findings point out to the high possibility that the Americas were much less "pristine" than what the Europeans found when they started to immigrate really massively only in the mid to late 16th century and especially after the 1600s. In a region like the Amazon, any significant remnant of towns and big orchards and plantations would've disappeared to the naked eye in just 100 or 200 years.

It's sad to imagine that where we now see some small isolated villages of 500 people there could've been thriving towns of a few thousands of people only 500-600 years ago. The population estimates for the Americas that hovered around 10-20 million inhabitants are now grossly outdated. 50-70 million was probably the right number.

 

[ACV]

LiDAR is amazing. It was used to reveal previously unrealized subterranean man made caves, spiral structures and “cities” at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Dr Evens...amazing!