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Laser Scans Reveal Maya 'Megalopolis' Below Guatemalan Jungle (nationalgeographic.com)
Laser-toting archaeologists have discovered an entire new city in the Central American jungle, the National Geographic reported this week. From the report: In what'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 have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala. 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.
Is LiDAR really a revolutionary technology at this point?
And it will all happen again.
Non-creimer link here.
Accurate.
I was about to write a post about how the spaniards destroyed them, but wanted to make sure so I checked wikipedia.
You are correct, the mayans et al in the region were in nearly continuous war, they did tremendous environmental damage to the point their cities were unfit to live in/around. Leadership was ineffectual and eventually gave way to a ruling council.
Rather amazing to see that they didn't leave because of a major event like disease or foreign occupation. Their society was just really built on a whole lot of crazy and stupid and it collapsed under it's own weight. Cities turned into ghost towns inhabited by squatters.
While many people do view history for anecdotes about today there are striking differences between us and the mayans. First off our governmental structures are built in a more complex way and rarely collapse. Our civilization spans globally now, you can be in peru, india, and australia and they've probably all seen the sponge bob square pants movie. Environmentally, we are destroying everything like a 9 billion strong monkey cancer apocolypse and we are going to pay for that in horrific and never ending ways.
The differences are very large, we will go the way of the maya eventually, however we're like a moon next to a marble when you compare our civilization to theirs and I do not believe we will go the same way. It might go similar, but we operate on a global scale not local, when we go down, we're going to burn this planet with us.
It's Mayan. Get it?
When the Earth realized our gaze was moving down dangerously close to the equator she yelled, "Hey! Keep your scanners up here, buddy!" ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Assuming you're serious... You seem to be confusing habitat overrun (a regional phenomenon) with global warming. AFAIK nobody knows for sure what brought down the Mayan civilization, but most people figure they grew too big too fast and cut down all the trees, etc.. That's not good behavior, certainly, but calling it "global warming" is way off base.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I'm flabbergasted that there are so many finger-wagging posts out of the gate chastising everything from anthropogenic global warming to Western Civilization to the propensity of an advanced society to destroy itself. I just simply feel excited for the archeologists--how thrilling it must be to make such a discovery and the excitement over planning next steps to learn more.
If the experience in Egypt is instructive -- and I believe it is -- look for massive looting to begin shortly.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
I see this being pronounced in "air quotes" a la doctor evil. LiDAR has been around for a very long time now, it is hardly revolutionary. In fact there was a similar story years ago, about the exact same thing, probably just a different place (or maybe the same story now in duplicate).
It is pretty cool. However at the same time my spidey sense is going off a bit on how "undiscovered" these places were. It seems much to vast and complex to have been unnoticed entirely. Locals perhaps have known about it forever but they have just not been unearthed as it isn't worth the trouble (or it is in a difficult region to get to).
Pirate link here.
But watch out for the massive boulder.
AFAIK nobody knows for sure what brought down the Mayan civilization.
Epidemics and diseases is the leading explanation. Almost the same thing happened to Europeans with plagues. The same thing happened to Roman Empire prior to complete collapse. So when conquistadores showed up, they were both immune and carriers.
"man made localized climate change", aka "deforestation and erosion".
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I'm hoping they find a ton of Mayan scripts. We have so few and finding more would tell us a great deal about their civilization. The Spanish priests burned every scrap of Mayan script they could find. Shameful.
This is obviously the city of Zarahemla. This is known.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
...You do realize that China and India have three times the population of the US....
And use 1/3 the resources.
Want to save the world?
Guess who would have to go first?!!!
That's Aztec not Mayans. The Mayan civilization collapsed centuries before Columbus ever showed up.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
I'm sure AmiMoJo will find some way how to blame whitey.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Trees are not Grass. You can't cut it once a week, it's takes quite some time for a Tree to grow.
Megalolopolis is great, it's got that crazy gold base. I have a feeling that it will be easy to find the Jungle Basin. But if they find Shakuras Plateau as well, we'll have to unfreeze idrA and MMA and have them go at it. Husky can cast it.
In the 9th century, there was a widespread political collapse in the central Maya region, resulting in internecine warfare, the abandonment of cities, and a northward shift of population. The Postclassic period saw the rise of Chichen Itza in the north, and the expansion of the aggressive K'iche' kingdom in the Guatemalan Highlands. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire colonized the Mesoamerican region, and a lengthy series of campaigns saw the fall of Nojpetén, the last Maya city, in 1697.
All true, but didn't things get better when they made peace with the Sons?
Nonaggression works!