New Mayan Ruins - Massive Discovery using New Imaging Technology

New Mayan Ruins - Massive Discovery using New Imaging Technology

Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping technique have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, industrial-sized agricultural fields, irrigation canals, defense works and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala.

The discoveries were announced by an alliance of U.S., European and Guatemalan archaeologists working with Guatemala’s Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation.

The study estimates that roughly 10 million people may have lived within the Maya Lowlands.

"Researchers used a mapping technique called LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection And Ranging. It bounces pulsed laser light off the ground, revealing contours hidden by dense foliage."

The mapping detected about 60,000 individual structures, including four major Mayan ceremonial centres with plazas and pyramids.

The images revealed that the Mayans partly drained swampy areas that haven’t been considered worth farming since.

The extensive defensive fences, ditch-and-rampart systems and irrigation canals suggest a highly organized workforce.

LiDAR revealed a previously undetected Maya fortress. It’s a citadel that has ditch and rampart systems that are nine meters tall.

Unlike some other ancient cultures, whose fields, roads and outbuildings have been destroyed by subsequent generations of farming, the jungle grew over abandoned Maya fields and structures, both hiding and preserving them.

* Source - www.theStar.com

New Mayan Ruins - Massive Discovery using New Imaging Technology