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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.
And it will all happen again.
Well the scanning mechanism revolves during operation. So, yes, technically, I guess?
Non-creimer link here.
Is LiDAR really a revolutionary technology at this point?
No, but using it for the purposes of Archeology is pretty new. The first such uses I know of were only 6 years ago.
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.
Is LiDAR really a revolutionary technology at this point?
No, but using it for the purposes of Archeology is pretty new.
Together, they open up new academic and career opportunities for sharks.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
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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 [scientificamerican.com] is instructive -- and I believe it is -- look for massive looting to begin shortly.
The article states that these sites are already being looted, with LIDAR showing "thousands" of pits having been dug, and that while unknown to researchers, they are obviously not unknown to locals. They hope to raise awareness of the problem.
But watch out for the massive boulder.
I'm looking at the article and the images, and it looks to me like they think a lot of these 'might' be structures, but also many could just be natural rock formations. It seems that everything the they think appears like a structural foundation is assumed to be a man made structure and then they add an AR building on top.
I'm sure the researchers know what they are dealing with and will go and do some verification, but I think maybe there's some media hype on just how certain the are. They haven't actually gone and uncovered any of these newly mapped structures as far as I can tell.
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.
That's Aztec not Mayans. The Mayan civilization collapsed centuries before Columbus ever showed up.
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