The Lidar technology allows you to see thousands of buildings, roads and canals, previously lost in the jungle.
The laser has helped us see thousands of structures built by the Maya and hidden in the endless jungle. Using Lidar, or LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging) technology, a team of archaeologists scanned thousands of hectares of land where the Mayan civilization flourished. They found no new large palaces, no pyramids, no temples like Kukulkan or the Big Jaguar. But countless buildings, roads, canals and walls were mapped, which gives an indication of the greatness of the Mayan civilization and gives an idea of what kind of population lived in these places, how they fought or how they led agriculture.
In 2016, specialists flew by plane over most of the territory of the Mayan civilization in El-Peten (Guatemala) with one of the most advanced Lidar systems on board. This technology uses a laser as a radar: it sends out pulses of light that allow you to build an image of an object by reflecting laser beams. In this case, a device was used that was capable of scanning an object from six different angles. It was provided by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, based in the United States. The Lidar covered an area of 2,144 square kilometers and discovered dozens of Mayan structures.
“This is the largest radar study in the history of archeology,” says Francisco Estrada-Belli, a Mayan cultural scholar at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA and one of the study's authors. This isn't the first time this imaging technology has been used to explore Maya culture, but this time, an expedition sponsored by the Pakunama Foundation explored 10 times the area in much greater detail. “Any object from 50 to 100 cm wide and 20 to 50 cm high will appear on the screen,” adds the archaeologist. To achieve similar results, Lidar emitted more than 33.5 billion laser pulses (15 per square meter).
The resulting 3D map, published in Science magazine, contains 61,480 objects. Whole quarters of major Mayan cities such as Tikal, Holmul or Xultun have been discovered, as have hundreds of kilometers of paved roads passing by cisterns up to 2,000 meters wide, such as Tintal, which could hold up to 3 million cubic meters of water. In addition, several kilometers of defensive structures, hundreds of canals and many small rural settlements connected by roads were discovered.
The information obtained helped the researchers assess the population level in the study area and in general throughout the Mayan region. During the period known as the Late Classic (between 650 and 800 AD), the population density in this area was 80-100 people per square kilometer. In the center of large cities such as Tikal, the density must have reached 2,000 people per square kilometer, which is comparable to modern cities. In general, 7-11 million people lived on the plains.
Images of the Lidar, verified in situ by several groups of archaeologists, also show that Maya society needed intensive agriculture to feed such an urban population. The traditional milpa system, based on burning plots to fertilize the land before planting again, would not have been able to cope without the hundreds of canals used to drain the swamps that occupied most of the land. During the study, 306 square kilometers of terraced areas were discovered. Up to 17% of the territory, which today is a selva, was previously used for agriculture. According to the authors of the study, this would be possible only if the Maya had developed centralized power.
Anabel Ford, director of the Mesoamerican Research Center at UC Santa Barbara, USA, says: “Lidar provides a fairly accurate picture of the geography of the landscape. It can be used on any terrain, but in the case of the Mayan forests, it becomes a real magic wand (and very expensive), which gives us a detailed image of drains, mountains, valleys, lowlands and, more importantly, large deposits."
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However, archaeologist Anabelle Ford, who has studied Maya culture for 40 years but was not involved in this study, adds that “while large objects look sharp, elements that provide small details about agriculture and the ancient Maya's relationship to land need additional verification”, and must be confirmed on site. Estrada-Belli agrees with this: “Experienced archaeologists will always be needed to recognize objects discovered by Lidar. And the more data, the more archaeologists will be needed."
Miguel Ángel Criado