WEBVTT - How Is New Laser Technology Discovering Ancient Ruins? 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.920 Lauren vogelbam here. By using a technology called lidar to 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.880 peer through the dense tree canopy of the Guatemalan jungle 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.000 from above, researchers have been covered a massive network of 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.880 ancient Mayan ruins which have been hidden for centuries. The discovery, 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.920 first reported by National Geographic, promises to alter our understanding 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:27.480 of the Maya civilization by revealing that it was far 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:31.120 bigger in scale and more advanced and complex than previously believed. 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.879 Researchers located the ruins of more than sixty thousand houses, palaces, highways, 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.720 and other man made features. A press release by the 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.919 University of Houston, home of the National Center for Airborne 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.920 Laser Mapping or ENCOM, describes the find as sprawling over 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.520 an area of eight hundred and eleven square miles that's 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:54.680 about square kilometers. To appreciate the size of this Maya megalopolis, 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.840 consider this it was one point seven times bigger than 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.720 the modern day city of Los Angeles. According to National Geographic. 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.119 The discovery suggests that the Maya civilization, which piqued one thousand, 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:09.040 two hundred years ago, was highly sophisticated. CNN reported that 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.000 the findings include a pyramid ninety feet that's twenty seven 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:16.200 meters tall, as well as evidence of agriculture, quarries and fortifications, 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:20.360 plus an extensive road system that connected settlements. According to CNN, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:23.600 researchers believe that ten million people lived in the region, 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:28.319 many times more than previous estimates. We spoke via email 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.880 with Thomas Garrison, a Maya archeologist and assistant professor at 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.840 Ithaca College who worked with other researchers on the project. 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.560 He said these findings are important because the data lay 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.560 bare an entire civilization that has not been disrupted by 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.600 modern development. The work was done in conjunction with a 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.880 Guatemalan non profit that focuses upon aiding scientific and archaeological 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:53.320 research and efforts to preserve local cultural heritage. Garrison explains, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.640 we don't just see the big sites. Instead, we're seeing 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.639 all of the infrastructure that made the Maya civilization function, 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.480 how they fed themselves, how they traveled, and how they 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.000 defended themselves. From the density of the settlement, he said, 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.680 we now know that the ancient Maya were able to 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.800 sustain a population in this region that was substantially greater 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.080 than what exists in the present, and they did so 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:18.120 for over a thousand years. Diane Davies, a British archaeologist 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.240 and educator who specializes in the Maya, says the discovery 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.600 of the extensive ruins could help challenge widely held assumptions 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.519 about the Maya culture, such as the belief that challenges 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.120 of living in the rainforest environment would have limited the 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.760 population size. She said via email. The Maya lived in 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.360 this area for over one thousand, five hundred years in 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.000 the millions. To live this long and at such high 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.000 numbers suggests that they were not only highly efficient in 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.240 their agricultural systems, but also environmentally aware. That is, they 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.080 knew the limitations of the environment and sought to protect it. 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.720 The new findings add to existing evidence of the Maya 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:56.840 civilizations advanced state, such as their writing system, mathematics, and 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.640 complex calendars. The Maya, Davies said, had some of the 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:04.200 largest temple pyramids in the world, all built without metal tools, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.839 the wheel or pack animals. These are just a few 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.560 of their achievements and why people need to reevaluate the Maya. 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.840 The discovery also is another example of how light aar, 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:19.400 which stands for light detection and ranging is rapidly revolutionizing archaeology. 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:21.720 Instead of hacking through the jungle in search of ruins, 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.560 researchers can fly over it in an aircraft equipped with 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.000 a laser and other equipment. By firing hundreds of thousands 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.920 of laser pulses each second, they can collect data and 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.600 create a three dimensional map of the ground surface and 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.360 its features. LIGHTAR was first developed by NASA in the 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.760 early nineteen seventies as a tool for space exploration. The 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.960 nineteen seventy one Apollo fifteen mission used an early lighter 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.080 instrument to map the Moon's surface topography from orbit, and 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.000 scientists would also use it to study Mars and detail 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.400 the shape of an asteroid. But archaeologists figured out how 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.840 to adapt the technology to find ancient ruins in remote places. 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:00.640 In the early twenty teens, researchers utilized LIGHTAR to locate 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.360 Lasieu da Blanca, the white city in Honduras whose existence 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:06.600 had been the subject of rumor in legend since the 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.520 days of her Non Cortes. More recently, others used LIDAR 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:13.960 to scan the Cambodian jungle and uncover a fourteen hundred 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.320 year old city that would have rivaled nom Fen in 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:20.760 size and Calm Director Ramesh L. Shress The says that 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.400 LDAR technology has become vastly more powerful since he began 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.200 to use it in the late nineteen nineties. In that time, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.240 devices have gone from shooting three thousand pulses per second 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.120 to nine hundred thousand today. That results in much higher 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:37.480 resolution maps and has reduced the amount of time required 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.359 to cover an area such as the Maya site, essentially 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.880 making a project of this scale possible. According to shress 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.080 theo though the Maya megalopolis may be dwarfed by even 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.000 bigger future LEDAR projects, he said, researchers eventually want to 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.720 map areas that are nearly fifty eight hundred square miles 0:04:53.720 --> 0:05:00.120 that's nearly fifteen thousand kilometers in Guatemala and Mexico m 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.039 Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.479 by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:22.560 other massive topics, visit our home planet, testaf works dot com.