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i feel like a kid again reading this, easily one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of my lifetime. At least it feels that way. Pertaining to the other thread I started on the discovery of a Mayan megalopolis in Guatemala. I decided to put this up separately to make sure it's seen. Feb. 6, 9pm eastern, National Geographic channel.
Wow....
(more details at the link)
https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...writes-History
February 01, 2018 02:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
WASHINGTON & GUATEMALA CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--From Egypt to China, the great civilizations of the ancient world have been long-studied and are instantly recognizable. The Maya, one of the more mysterious ancient civilizations, has never been considered on the same scale, until now. A pioneering new survey of the Guatemalan jungle using a remote surveying method to see through the forest canopy, has mapped the ground below to reveal more than 60,000 previously unknown structures that reveal a vast, interconnected network of cities, fortifications, farms and highways. It also reveals an engineered and managed landscape with specialized areas of agriculture capable of sustaining a massive population with food on an almost industrial scale. This complete re-write of long-held beliefs about the Maya is told for the very first time in National Geographic’s Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings, premiering Tuesday, Feb. 6 at 9/8c.
For decades, archaeologists toiled in dense jungle to piece together their knowledge of the Maya. Hampered by the thick forest, their findings lead to the theory that Maya cities were largely isolated and self-sufficient. However, this long-held belief is now being overturned by Guatemala's PACUNAM LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) Initiative, a consortium of over 30 scientists and archaeologists from leading academic institutions worldwide organised and funded by the PACUNAM Foundation, which has used expensive technology to survey over 2,000 square kilometres of Guatemalan forest by plane. The findings – depicted in epic new digital maps and an Augmented Reality application translating the aerial data into a ground view that was custom-designed for the documentary – lay bare the landscape below the foliage without a single tree or creeper having to be cut down. They suggest earlier Maya population assessments of one to two million fall far short of new estimates up to 20 million inhabitants across the Maya Lowlands – a figure that places around half the entire population of Europe at the time, in an area roughly the size of Italy.
“It’s like a magic trick,” one of the archaeologists leading the project, Tom Garrison, says in the one-hour special, adding, “The survey is the most important development in Maya archaeology in 100 years.”
Wow....
(more details at the link)
https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...writes-History
February 01, 2018 02:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
WASHINGTON & GUATEMALA CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--From Egypt to China, the great civilizations of the ancient world have been long-studied and are instantly recognizable. The Maya, one of the more mysterious ancient civilizations, has never been considered on the same scale, until now. A pioneering new survey of the Guatemalan jungle using a remote surveying method to see through the forest canopy, has mapped the ground below to reveal more than 60,000 previously unknown structures that reveal a vast, interconnected network of cities, fortifications, farms and highways. It also reveals an engineered and managed landscape with specialized areas of agriculture capable of sustaining a massive population with food on an almost industrial scale. This complete re-write of long-held beliefs about the Maya is told for the very first time in National Geographic’s Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings, premiering Tuesday, Feb. 6 at 9/8c.
For decades, archaeologists toiled in dense jungle to piece together their knowledge of the Maya. Hampered by the thick forest, their findings lead to the theory that Maya cities were largely isolated and self-sufficient. However, this long-held belief is now being overturned by Guatemala's PACUNAM LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) Initiative, a consortium of over 30 scientists and archaeologists from leading academic institutions worldwide organised and funded by the PACUNAM Foundation, which has used expensive technology to survey over 2,000 square kilometres of Guatemalan forest by plane. The findings – depicted in epic new digital maps and an Augmented Reality application translating the aerial data into a ground view that was custom-designed for the documentary – lay bare the landscape below the foliage without a single tree or creeper having to be cut down. They suggest earlier Maya population assessments of one to two million fall far short of new estimates up to 20 million inhabitants across the Maya Lowlands – a figure that places around half the entire population of Europe at the time, in an area roughly the size of Italy.
“It’s like a magic trick,” one of the archaeologists leading the project, Tom Garrison, says in the one-hour special, adding, “The survey is the most important development in Maya archaeology in 100 years.”
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