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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.

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Revolutionary? by Narcocide · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well the scanning mechanism revolves during operation. So, yes, technically, I guess?

  2. Re:Lost City of the Monkey God by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Non-creimer link here.

  3. Re:A civilisation brought low by global warming by taiwanjohn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  4. Re:Revolutionary? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.