The History Room
It would be exciting to explore the jungles. Dangerous, but exciting.
Vast Maya Kingdom Is Revealed in Guatemalan Jungle
[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]Nestled in the jungle of northern Guatemala, a vast network of interconnected Maya settlements built millennia ago has been mapped in unprecedented detail.
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]The civilization featured towering pyramids, palaces, terraces, ball courts and reservoirs connected by a sprawling web of causeways, an international group of archaeologists reported during a presentation at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City this month.
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]Their findings reveal a “level of infrastructure that is just mind-boggling,” said Dr. Timothy Beach, a professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin who wasn’t involved in the research.
The archaeologists identified nearly 1,000 Maya settlements, which they said were mostly built between 1,000 B.C. and 150 A.D. The findings, also detailed in a paper published last month in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, were made possible by airborne laser mapping technology that can penetrate the jungle canopy. They challenge some previously held ideas that this part of Mesoamerica, which archaeologists call the Maya lowlands, was sparsely populated during that period.
[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]“We had no idea of the concentration and density of ancient cities out there,” said Richard Hansen, an Idaho State University archaeologist and lead author of the study. He is also the director of the Mirador Basin Project, a Guatemala-based group studying and protecting the area. The findings, Dr. Hansen said, “tell a story of the rise and precocious development of an incredibly organized, sophisticated society.”
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]Beginning in 2015, scientists from the U.S. and Guatemala spent years using a plane equipped with sophisticated light-detection and ranging, or lidar, equipment to map a 700-square-mile area in and around what is known as the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin. This 1.6-million-acre area of tropical forest, peppered with swamps and bordered by hills, extends from northern Guatemala into southern Campeche, Mexico.
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]Over the past five decades or so, archaeologists have discovered many Maya settlements in the basin, including the ancient city of El Mirador, which includes the roughly 230-foot-tall pyramid known as La Danta, one of the largest in the world by volume, built more than 2,000 years ago.
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]Some places mapped by Dr. Hansen’s group had been examined on the ground, said Billie Turner, an Arizona State University professor of environment and society who wasn’t involved in the study. Those include El Mirador, Nakbe and Tintal. Yet the new data, Dr. Turner said, help “confirm the phenomenal extent of landscape change undertaken by the Maya.”
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[COLOR=var(--primary-text-color)]The lidar data, which took years to analyze, revealed the existence of previously unidentified canals, dams, terraces, quarries, causeways, temples and ceremonial complexes. The researchers also identified ball courts once used for competitive sports.[/COLOR]
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Originally Posted by carolina73
Originally Posted by carolina73 
