Lasers Show Massive, 650-Square-Mile Maya Site Hidden Beneath Guatemalan Rainforest
Geologists in northern Guatemala have discovered a large Maya site that stretches roughly 650 square miles (1,700 square kilometres) and dates to the Middle and Late Preclassic time (approximately 1000 B.C. to 250 B.C.).
The findings were the outcome of an aerial survey that scientists conducted through airplanes utilizing lidar (light detection and also ranging), in which lasers are beamed out, and also the reflected light is utilized to create aerial images of a landscape. The innovation is especially beneficial in areas such as the rain forests of Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin, where lasers could penetrate the thick tree canopy.
Utilizing information from the scans, the group identified greater than 1,000 settlements dotting the region, which were interconnected by 100 miles (160 kilometres) of causeways that the Maya likely traversed walking. They also spotted the remains of numerous large platforms and also pyramids, along with canals and reservoirs utilized for water collection, according to the research study, which was released Dec. 5th in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.
The landscape of the Maya region
The lidar data reveal “for the first time a location that was integrated politically and economically, and never seen prior to in other areas in the Western Hemisphere,” research study co-author Carlos Morales-Aguilar, a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Geography and the Environment at the College of Texas at Austin, informed Live Science in an e-mail. “We can currently see the whole landscape of the Maya region” in this part of Guatemala, he stated.
So, what made this region so tempting that the Maya would wish to settle there in the first place?
“For the Maya, the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin was the ‘Goldilocks Area,'” study co-author Ross Ensley, a geologist with the Institute for Geological Research Study of the Maya Lowlands in Houston, informed Live Science in an email.
“The Maya settled in [this area] because it had the best mix of uplands for settlement and lowlands for agriculture. The uplands offered a source for limestone, their main building product, and dry land to live on. The lowlands are mainly seasonal swamps, or bajos, which offered space for wetland farming as well as organic-rich soil for use in terraced farming.”
Scientists have previously utilized lidar to scan Maya sites in Guatemala. In 2015, an initiative known as the Mirador Basin Project conducted 2 large-scale surveys of the southern part of the basin, focusing on the ancient city of El Mirador. According to the study, that project resulted in the mapping of 658 square miles (1,703 square km) of this part of the country.
Morales Aguiar’s explanation
“When I produced the first bare-earth designs of the old city of El Mirador, I was blown away,” Morales-Aguilar said. “It was interesting to observe the huge number of reservoirs, monumental pyramids, terraces, residential areas, and small mounds for the first time.”
Scientists wish lidar technology will help them explore areas of Guatemala that have remained a secret for centuries.
“Lidar has been revolutionary for archaeology in this field, especially if it is covered in tropical forest where visibility is limited,” Marcello Canuto, supervisor of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane College and an anthropologist who wasn’t involved in the study, told Live Science. “While surveying, we have a tendency to see a little part of the causeway, but lidar allows us to see things that are big and linear. This research allows us to see the region for the first time; the fact that we have this information is transformative.“
Read the original article on Scientific American.
Read More: How Supermassive Fuel-Hungry Black Holes Feed off Intergalactic Gas
