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Lasers Unearth Lost 'Agropolis' of New England
sciencehabit writes "Hidden ruins are customary in the wild jungles of South America or on the white shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Now, researchers have uncovered a long-lost culture closer to Western civilization — in New England. Using aerial surveys created by LiDAR, a laser-guided mapping technique, the team detected the barely perceptible remnants of a former 'agropolis' around three rural New England towns (abstract). Near Ashford, Connecticut, a vast network of roads offset by stone walls came to light underneath a canopy of oak and spruce trees. More than half of the town has become reforested since 1870, according to historical documents, exemplifying the extent of the rural flight that marked the late 1800s. Some structures were less than 2 feet high and buried in inaccessible portions of the forest, making them essentially invisible to on-the-ground cartography."
The use of LIDAR and other sensing techniques is having a powerful impact on archaeology around the world. New finds keep turning up, and there is still a lot of the earth to explore with those sensing technologies. Couple that with the ongoing efforts to digitize old records and the growing use of geospatial information systems and there are some interesting times ahead.
Great article: The technology uncovering humanity's past, and perhaps its future
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Now, researchers have uncovered a long-lost culture closer to Western civilization — in New England.
"Long lost civilization" here means 1700s New England farms, it's not a discovery that Native Americans were building saw mills or anything.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."