A New Massive Ancient Mayan Civilization was Just Discovered
Scientists used LiDar technology to find it
Hiya!
Conversations about technological advancements usually look toward the future. Whether by extending our lifespans and curing diseases or relocating our species to another planet if/when we destroy this one beyond survivability. But one relatively recent technological invention is kinda used to look in the opposite direction — our past.
LiDAR technology reveals ancient cities hidden beneath dense vegetation and overgrowth. Using LiDAR, scientists can discover, protect, and excavate our ancient past without unintentionally destroying it. LiDAR has already exposed thousands of ancient Mayan structures throughout South America, and now it has uncovered another one, and it’s massive.
What is LiDAR?
I wrote about LiDAR before, but it’s worth a recap. If you don’t know, LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and was developed in the 1980s after lasers were invented and the Global Positioning System (GPS) became widely available.
Typically, a LiDAR system sends hundreds of thousands of laser pulses toward the ground from an airplane or helicopter, then measures how long it takes for the beams to bounce back from objects on the surface — such as treetops, the ground, or structures.
You're correct if you think LiDAR sounds similar to sonar. Sonar technology is the same basic concept, except instead of lasers, sonar pulses soundwaves to map the ocean floor. The result of both technologies is a three-dimensional map of an environment’s topography. Marcello Canuto, anthropology professor and director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University, uses a great example to understand LiDAR better:
"Imagine you're in Poughkeepsie, (New York), and that's all you can see, but you might catch this thing that we call the turnpike, right, but everything else is covered in jungle ... you'll have no idea that this turnpike might connect New York with Philadelphia. LiDAR is telling us everything that we found archaeologically over the last 100 years, here and there, is found everywhere ... LiDAR lets us connect all the dots."
In essence, LiDAR technology allows experts to discover more in a few days than archeologists could ever hope to learn by exploring thick Amazonian vegetation on the ground. Even when they find a ruin on foot, it can take decades to excavate and even longer to know how many other structures are around the initial find. In contrast, LiDAR reveals not just one or two structures but entire cities with causeways and reservoirs — and it does it without disturbing the environment and ecosystems around them.
New Mayan Civilzation
Recently, geologist researchers from the United States and Guatemala found over 1,000 settlements covering about 650 square miles (1,700 square kilometers) across northern Guatemala. More specifically, the densely forested Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin, and in December 2022, the researchers published their discoveries in Ancient Mesoamerica.
The site dates back to the Middle and Late Preclassic period — or between about 1,000 and 250 BCE — and includes cultural centers, settlements, cities, canals, several pyramids, tiered platforms, and reservoirs, all connected with 110 miles (177 km) of causeways.
Upon further investigation, the researchers found the impressive causeways were constructed using quarry stones, mud, and several layers of limestone cement. Many were almost half the length of an American football field wide at 131 feet (40 meters).
The pathways the Maya people used for commuting were elevated and covered with a thick layer of white plaster. The researchers believe the white coloring would have increased visibility for night-time travel as it would reflect the moonlight. The very existence of this impressive discovery highlights how expansive the Maya civilizations were during this period. Ruins like these give us a glimpse into how the Maya lived.
For instance, the study’s co-author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, Carlos Morales-Aguilar, told Live Science that the LiDAR data showed an area integrated politically and economically unlike anything seen before in the Western Hemisphere. Using LiDAR, experts can now see the entire landscape of the Maya region across northern Guatemala.
During the Maya’s time, the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin was like a ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ according to another study co-author, Ross Ensley, a geologist with the Institute for Geological Study of the Maya Lowlands in Houston. He explains that,
"The Maya settled in [this region] because it had the right mix of uplands for settlement and lowlands for agriculture. The uplands provided a source for limestone, their primary building material, and dry land to live on. The lowlands are mostly seasonal swamps, or bajos, which provided space for wetland agriculture as well as organic-rich soil for use in terraced agriculture."
That sounds like an enticing new home for any civilization. However, the basin isn’t the only area the Maya settled in Guatemala — nor is it the only one discovered using LiDAR.
Previously Discovered Mayan Cities
At least two other major Maya discoveries are thanks to LiDAR. The first was in 2015 during the Mirador Basin Project, which executed two large-scale LiDAR surveys that mapped 658 square miles (1,703 square km) of the southern area of the basin around the ancient city of El Mirador.
In its prime, between 600 and 100 BCE, researchers think El Mirador could have been home to 200,000 people. Beyond the city of El Mirador, the southern basin could have had a million residents.
The city was first discovered in 1967 by British Mayanist Ian Graham and has been excavated ever since. Thankfully, LiDAR speeds up the process by identifying several roads and causeways previously covered by thick vegetation, which indicated the ancient Maya were far more organized and widespread than researchers knew.
A few years later, in 2018, researchers published their findings in the journal Science after using LiDAR to identify 61,480 additional Maya structures spanning over 770 square miles (2,000 square km) also in Northern Guatemala. Between 7 to 11 million are estimated to have flourished there from 1000 BCE to 1500 CE.
Perspective Shift
LiDAR allows experts to identify ancient ruins with speed and precision unlike nothing before. Not to mention it’s non-invasive and doesn’t harm the environment or surrounding ecosystems like human activity does. As a whole, LiDAR technology allows experts to map vast expanses of inaccessible land so when archeologists venture in on foot to explore, they’ll have a better idea of which areas to excavate first.
Thanks to the massive amount of discoveries thus far, and the information these discoveries suggest about the ancient Maya civilizations, we have a unique picture of our past. It shows the Maya were far more complex and advanced than ever imagined. Their cities were huge and brilliantly engineered, and thousands of structures suggest bustling social lives. And they accomplished it all without the advanced technology we modern humans depend on. It makes me wonder what we could learn from them.
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