Posted on 09/28/2018 1:57:01 PM PDT by Red Badger
Tulane University researchers Marcello Canuto and Francisco Estrada-Belli are part of a team of researchers who uncovered ancient cities in northern Guatemala through the use of jungle-penetrating LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology. Credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science
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Tulane University researchers, documenting the discovery of dozens of ancient cities in northern Guatemala through the use of jungle-penetrating Lidar (light detection and ranging) technology, have published their results in the prestigious journal Science.
The article includes the work of Marcello Canuto, director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane, and Francisco Estrada-Belli, a research assistant professor at Tulane and director of the Holmul Archaeological Project since 2000. They worked with assistant professor of anthropology Thomas Garrison of Ithaca College as well as other scholars to make their discoveries in the Petén forest of Guatemala.
A consortium of 18 scholars from U.S., Europe and Guatemalan institutions including the Ministry of Culture and Sports were enabled by the Fundación PACUNAM (Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation) to analyze lidar data covering over 2,100 square kilometers of the Maya Biosphere Reserve.
"Since LiDAR technology is able to pierce through thick forest canopy and map features on the earth's surface, it can be used to produce ground maps that enable us to identify human-made features on the ground, such as walls, roads or buildings," Canuto said.
The PACUNAM LiDAR INITIATIVE (PLI), is the largest single lidar survey in the history of Mesoamerican archaeology. The collaborative scientific effort has provided fine-grained quantitative data of unprecedented scope to refine long-standing debates regarding the nature of ancient lowland Maya urbanism. Specifically, the key identifications of this study are:
![](https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/5bae1ce6595ea.jpg")
A newly-documented site to the north of Tikal illustrates the range of features uncovered by lidar, as well as the complexity of interpreting them. The elongated building at top right is part of a so-called E Group complex and may pre-date 500 BCE. Across the valley, the large acropolis is likely a thousand years younger, though it may cover earlier constructions. Its broad access ramp overlaps an earlier causeway that runs between two eroded hilltop platforms, at the top and bottom of the image. Small houses and sunken garden enclosures cover the hillsides. Credit: Luke Auld-Thomas/PACUNAM
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61,480 ancient structures in the survey region, resulting in an estimated population of 7 to 11 million at height of the Late Classic period (650-800 CE). The structures include isolated houses, large palaces, ceremonial centers and pyramids. 362 square kilometers of terraces or otherwise modified agricultural terrain and another 952 square kilometers of viable farmland, demonstrating a landscape heavily modified for the intensive agriculture necessary to sustainably support massive populations for many centuries. 106 square kilometers of causeways within and between urban centers and numerous, sizeable defensive earthworks. This substantial infrastructure investment highlights the interconnectivity of cities and hinterlands as well as the scale of Maya warfare.
Both Canuto and Estrada-Belli noted that discoveries were made in a matter of minutes, compared to what would have taken years of fieldwork without the LiDAR technology.
"Seen as a whole, terraces and irrigation channels, reservoirs, fortifications and causeways reveal an astonishing amount of land modification done by the Maya over their entire landscape on a scale previously unimaginable," Estrada-Belli said.
It takes months of analysis to translate lidar terrain data into meaningful archaeological interpretations. Familiar shaded relief terrain visualizations (left) can conceal subtle but important details, like low mounds or cross-channel terraces. More complex visualizations such as the Red Relief Image Map (center) make those details pop, but even so archaeologists must identify and classify features manually for subsequent analysis (right). All three images are of the site of Dos Torres, in the rugged karst hills between the cities of Tikal and Uaxactun. Credit: Luke Auld-Thomas and Marcello A. Canuto/PACUNAM
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Explore further: Scientists find massive Mayan society under Guatemala jungle
More information: Marcello A Canuto et al. Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala. Science 28 Sep 2018: Vol. 361, Issue 6409, eaau0137 DOI: 10.1126/science.aau0137
Journal reference: Science search and more info website
Provided by: Tulane University
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-unprecedented-massive-scale-lowland-maya.html#jCp
PinGGG!.................
A newly-documented site to the north of Tikal illustrates the range of features uncovered by lidar, as well as the complexity of interpreting them. The elongated building at top right is part of a so-called E Group complex and may pre-date 500 BCE. Across the valley, the large acropolis is likely a thousand years younger, though it may cover earlier constructions. Its broad access ramp overlaps an earlier causeway that runs between two eroded hilltop platforms, at the top and bottom of the image. Small houses and sunken garden enclosures cover the hillsides. Credit: Luke Auld-Thomas/PACUNAM Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-unprecedented-massive-scale-lowland-maya.html#jCp
Seems a wee bit high on the population estimate. :-))
Assuming they migrated to someplace else, who are their descendants?
Assuming they all died from war, disease or starvation, where are all the graves and skeletons?
Assuming they all left in flying saucers, where is that Alien Guy?......................
Climate change.
Where did they all go?????...................
Undocumented and living in Southern California.
Bad hair day!
I thought there were still plenty of Mayans around, and their language is still alive. It’s just their cities which are gone.
High or not, the Government of Guatemala has a TOURIST TREASURE ON THEIR HANDS!
They should develop it with hotels, tours, cruises and the whole nine yards!...................
Today, it’s estimated that about 6 million indigenous Mayans still speak Mayan languages. Most of these people live in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. In Guatemala, there are 21 known Mayan languages, and there are eight more in Mexico.
Ancient Mayan Language - incamayanaztec.com
incamayanaztec.com/ancient-mayan-language.html
Yes, they are still around and they don’t like outsiders..............
Oh horrors, there go those white scientist types again! (NASA credited with lots of development of LIDAR.)
Maybe the Aztecs ate them.
Thanks for sharing. Fascinating!
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (often referred to as The Theory of Survival of the Fittest) describes the positive effects resulting from any “pressure” on an animal species that removes the least fit among the species and allows only the most fit of the species to reproduce. Many of us are well aware of this “Survival of the Fittest” theory, but few are aware that Darwin also makes mention of the negative effects resulting from unlimited reproduction of a species’ least fit when the weak, the lazy, and the stupid are left unchecked.
We like to think otherwise, but our species, Homo sapiens-sapiens, isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the same laws of nature that affect all of God’s creatures apply equally to us. If we were to observe any other species that had been allowed to reproduce without limitations, we would know immediately what the consequences will be. Whenever the weak; lazy; and stupid of a species are allowed to reproduce unimpeded by predators that feed off the weak; lazy; and stupid, they soon outnumber the strong, productive, and intelligent.
When the weak/lazy/stupid dominate the gene pool, the entire population becomes weak/ lazy/stupid Liberal Democrats, and then the population collapses.
They didn’t have the heart to do it...............
I was in belize and the yucatan penninsula a couple times over the last couple of years. The impression that I got was that the maya was one continuous megacity from Guatemala to the Yucatan peninsula. Like what you’d see driving from Washington DC to Boston. Or Richmond to NYC.
The story that is emerging is that there was a mega drought about 800 AD. This was part of a climate change event that dried up the Mississippi valley allowing the cultivation of the rich Illinois lowlands by the people who made cahokia. The same climate event also made Scandinavia warmer so that population exploded.
The drought initially wiped out the lowland populations. The Yucatan survived longer on trade. There were horrific stories that involved human sacrifice that came out of the period. It was an honor for members of the priest class and nobility to sacrifice themselves..The mayan imagined a vain thing. They imagined that there was some sort of cause and effect to their sacrifices and weather events. After 800 no matter how much they sacrificed —the rains did not return.
By 880 AD even the Yucatan maya were severely weakened by drought and human sacrifice. The Toltec came down from Central Mexico and conquered a couple cities in the Yucatan. They introduced a new practice that the Aztecs would later emulate. They raided neighboring states just to grab neighboring warriors and elites for their human sacrifices.
Taken together, human sacrifice, war, and drought emptied the cities of the Maya. Leaving behind only some local farmers,
The weather changed again in 1300-1400. Europe grew colder. The rains returned to the Mississippi Valley and flooded out Cahokia. the rains also returned to the lands of the maya and covered over the region again with jungle.
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