Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: Rain Stuff. Lauren Vogel Bam here with another classic episode.
Speaker 1: Archaeology is the study of ancient things, but new technology
Speaker 1: is making it safer and cooler for both researchers and
Speaker 1: the sites they seek. In this episode, we talk about
Speaker 1: how light detection and ranging technology or LDAR is changing
Speaker 1: the game. Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bam here. By using a
Speaker 1: technology called lidar to peer through the dense tree canopy
Speaker 1: of the Guatemalan jungle from above, researchers haven't covered a
Speaker 1: massive network of ancient Mayan ruins which have been hidden
Speaker 1: for centuries. The discovery, first reported by National Geographic promises
Speaker 1: to alter our understanding of the Maya civilization by revealing
Speaker 1: that it was far bigger in scale and more advanced
Speaker 1: and complex than previously believed. Researcher located the ruins of
Speaker 1: more than sixty thousand houses, palaces, highways, and other man
Speaker 1: made features. A press release by the University of Houston,
Speaker 1: home of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping or ENCOM,
Speaker 1: describes the find as sprawling over an area of eight
Speaker 1: hundred and eleven square miles that's about square kilometers. To
Speaker 1: appreciate the size of this Maya megalopolis, consider this, it
Speaker 1: was one point seven times bigger than the modern day
Speaker 1: city of Los Angeles, according to National Geographic The discovery
Speaker 1: suggests that the Maya civilization, which peaked one thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, was highly sophisticated. CNN reported that the
Speaker 1: findings include a pyramid ninety feet that's twenty seven meters tall,
Speaker 1: as well as evidence of agriculture, quarries and fortifications, plus
Speaker 1: an extensive road system that connected settlements. According to CNN,
Speaker 1: researchers believe that ten million people lived in the region,
Speaker 1: many times more than previous estimates. We spoke via email
Speaker 1: with Thomas Garrison, a Maya archaeologist and assistant professor at
Speaker 1: Ithaca College who were with other researchers on the project.
Speaker 1: He said these findings are important because the data lay
Speaker 1: bare an entire civilization that has not been disrupted by
Speaker 1: modern development. The work was done in conjunction with a
Speaker 1: Guatemalan nonprofit that focuses upon aiding scientific and archaeological research
Speaker 1: and efforts to preserve local cultural heritage. Garrison explains, we
Speaker 1: don't just see the big sites. Instead, we're seeing all
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure that made the Maya civilization function, how
Speaker 1: they fed themselves, how they traveled, and how they defended themselves.
Speaker 1: From the density of the settlement, he said, we now
Speaker 1: know that the ancient Maya were able to sustain a
Speaker 1: population in this region that was substantially greater than what
Speaker 1: exists in the present, and they did so for over
Speaker 1: a thousand years. Diane Davies, a British archaeologist and educator
Speaker 1: who specializes in the Maya, says the discovery of the
Speaker 1: extensive ruins could help challenge widely held assumptions about the
Speaker 1: Maya culture, such as the belief that challenges of living
Speaker 1: in the rainforest environment would have limited the population size.
Speaker 1: She said via email. The Maya lived in this area
Speaker 1: for over one thousand, five hundred years in the millions.
Speaker 1: To live this long and at such high numbers suggests
Speaker 1: that they were not only highly efficient in their agricultural systems,
Speaker 1: but also environmentally aware. That is, they knew the limitations
Speaker 1: of the environment and sought to protect it. The new
Speaker 1: findings add to existing evidence of the Maya civilizations advanced
Speaker 1: state such as their writing system, mathematics, and complex calendars.
Speaker 1: The Maya, Davies said, had some of the largest temple
Speaker 1: pyramids in the world, all built without metal tools, the wheel,
Speaker 1: or pack animals. These are just a few of their
Speaker 1: achievements and why people need to reevaluate the Maya. The
Speaker 1: discovery also is another example of how light ARE, which
Speaker 1: stands for light detection and ranging, is rapidly revolutionizing archaeology.
Speaker 1: Instead of hacking through the jungle in search of ruins,
Speaker 1: researchers can fly over it in an aircraft equipped with
Speaker 1: a laser and other equipment. By firing hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of laser pulses each second, they can collect data and
Speaker 1: create a three dimensional map of the ground surface and
Speaker 1: its features. LDAR was first developed by NASA in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies as a tool for space exploration. The
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one Apollo fifteen mission used an early LDAR
Speaker 1: instrument to map the Moon's surface topography from orbit, and
Speaker 1: scientists would also use it to study Mars and detail
Speaker 1: the shape of an asteroid. But archaeologists figured out how
Speaker 1: to adapt the technology to find ancient ruins in remote places.
Speaker 1: In the early twenty teens, researchers utilized lidar to locate
Speaker 1: Lasieu da Blanca, the white city in Honduras whose existence
Speaker 1: had been the subject of rumor in legend since the
Speaker 1: days of her Non Cortes. More recently, others used lidar
Speaker 1: to scan the Cambodian jungle and uncover a fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: year old city that would have rivaled nom Fen in
Speaker 1: size and calm. Director Ramesh L. Shresta says that lidar
Speaker 1: technology has become vastly more powerful since he began to
Speaker 1: use it in the late nineteen nineties. In that time,
Speaker 1: devices have gone from shooting three thousand pulses per second
Speaker 1: to nine hundred thousand today. That was in much higher
Speaker 1: resolution maps and has reduced the amount of time required
Speaker 1: to cover an area such as the Maya site, essentially
Speaker 1: making a project of this scale possible, according to shress Though,
Speaker 1: though the Maya megalopolis may be dwarfed by even bigger
Speaker 1: future ledar projects, he said researchers eventually want to map
Speaker 1: areas that are nearly fifty eight hundred square miles that's
Speaker 1: nearly fifteen kilometers in Guatemala and Mexico. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article scientists use lidar to discover massive
Speaker 1: lost Mayan city on how stuff works dot Com, written
Speaker 1: by Patrick J. Kaiger. Brain Stuff is productive i Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
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