Researchers have discovered a massive, 2000-year-old Mayan city in Guatemala that was concealed by a jungle.
According to Metro News, while examining northern Guatemala from the air, researchers found the remnants of a sizable Mayan city that had been submerged beneath the rainforest.
The area, which lies near the Mexican border and is a whopping 650 square miles, is referred to as the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin, the news source said. The metropolis, which flourished 2,000 years ago, was thought to have consisted of some 1,000 dwellings connected by 110 kilometres of causeways, according to archaeologists. Being 110 miles long, the navigable causeways (cleared, raised beds used as roadways) made it very simple for those living in the civilisation to get to surrounding villages.
Researchers from various American colleges, together with associates from France and Guatemala, made the finding using LiDAR (light detection and ranging).
According to Interesting Engineering, LiDAR is a detecting technology based on laser light as opposed to radio waves, much like radar. Because LiDAR can penetrate jungles and expose what lies underneath them, researchers chose to employ it.
In their study, which was published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, the researchers said, “This study uses airborne Lidar data to demonstrate how complex societies organised their infrastructure to reflect their socio-economic organisation and political power.”
The researchers discovered evidence of massive platforms and pyramids in several villages, as mentioned in the press release. They emphasize that this shows some of these settlements may have acted as centralized centres for employment, pleasure, and politics. Additionally, they mention that some of the communities had ball courts that were utilized for a variety of regional games, according to an earlier study.
The researchers also learned that individuals in the civilization constructed reservoirs to store water for use during dry spells and canals to transport it.
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