Mayan civilization was much vaster than known, thousands of newly discovered structures reveal
Archaeologists have spent more than a century traipsing through the Guatemalan jungle, Indiana Jones-style, searching through dense vegetation to learn what they could about the Mayan civilization that was one of the dominant societies in Mesoamerica for centuries.
But the latest discovery — one that archaeologists are calling a “game changer” — didn't even require a can of bug spray.
Scientists using high-tech, airplane-based lidar mapping tools have discovered tens of thousands of structures constructed by the Mayans: defense works, houses, buildings, industrial-sized agricultural fields, even new pyramids. The findings, announced Thursday, are already reshaping long-held views about the size and scope of Mayan civilization.
“This world, which was lost to this jungle, is all of a sudden revealed in the data,” said Albert Yu-Min Lin, an engineer and National Geographic explorer who worked on a television special about the new find, told the New York Times. “And what you thought was this massively understood, studied civilization is all of a sudden brand new again.”
Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who led the project, called it monumental: “This is a game changer,” he told NPR. It changes “the base level at which we do Maya archaeology.”
The findings were announced by Guatemala's Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation, which has been working with a group of European and U.S. archaeologists in employing the lidar system.
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