BrainStuff Classics: How Is New Laser Technology Discovering Ancient Ruins?

Ancient ruins, long grown over by massive forests, can be found painlessly -- thanks to lasers. Learn how LiDAR is preserving forests and uncovering lost Mayan infrastructure in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/future-tech/scientists-use-lidar-to-discover-massive-lost-mayan-city.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Rain Stuff. Lauren Vogel Bam here with another classic episode.
Archaeology is the study of ancient things, but new technology
is making it safer and cooler for both researchers and
the sites they seek. In this episode, we talk about

(00:22):
how light detection and ranging technology or LDAR is changing
the game. Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works,
Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bam here. By using a
technology called lidar to peer through the dense tree canopy
of the Guatemalan jungle from above, researchers haven't covered a

(00:43):
massive network of ancient Mayan ruins which have been hidden
for centuries. The discovery, first reported by National Geographic promises
to alter our understanding of the Maya civilization by revealing
that it was far bigger in scale and more advanced
and complex than previously believed. Researcher located the ruins of
more than sixty thousand houses, palaces, highways, and other man

(01:04):
made features. A press release by the University of Houston,
home of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping or ENCOM,
describes the find as sprawling over an area of eight
hundred and eleven square miles that's about square kilometers. To
appreciate the size of this Maya megalopolis, consider this, it
was one point seven times bigger than the modern day

(01:25):
city of Los Angeles, according to National Geographic The discovery
suggests that the Maya civilization, which peaked one thousand, two
hundred years ago, was highly sophisticated. CNN reported that the
findings include a pyramid ninety feet that's twenty seven meters tall,
as well as evidence of agriculture, quarries and fortifications, plus
an extensive road system that connected settlements. According to CNN,

(01:47):
researchers believe that ten million people lived in the region,
many times more than previous estimates. We spoke via email
with Thomas Garrison, a Maya archaeologist and assistant professor at
Ithaca College who were with other researchers on the project.
He said these findings are important because the data lay
bare an entire civilization that has not been disrupted by

(02:08):
modern development. The work was done in conjunction with a
Guatemalan nonprofit that focuses upon aiding scientific and archaeological research
and efforts to preserve local cultural heritage. Garrison explains, we
don't just see the big sites. Instead, we're seeing all
of the infrastructure that made the Maya civilization function, how
they fed themselves, how they traveled, and how they defended themselves.

(02:31):
From the density of the settlement, he said, we now
know that the ancient Maya were able to sustain a
population in this region that was substantially greater than what
exists in the present, and they did so for over
a thousand years. Diane Davies, a British archaeologist and educator
who specializes in the Maya, says the discovery of the
extensive ruins could help challenge widely held assumptions about the

(02:51):
Maya culture, such as the belief that challenges of living
in the rainforest environment would have limited the population size.
She said via email. The Maya lived in this area
for over one thousand, five hundred years in the millions.
To live this long and at such high numbers suggests
that they were not only highly efficient in their agricultural systems,
but also environmentally aware. That is, they knew the limitations

(03:14):
of the environment and sought to protect it. The new
findings add to existing evidence of the Maya civilizations advanced
state such as their writing system, mathematics, and complex calendars.
The Maya, Davies said, had some of the largest temple
pyramids in the world, all built without metal tools, the wheel,
or pack animals. These are just a few of their
achievements and why people need to reevaluate the Maya. The

(03:38):
discovery also is another example of how light ARE, which
stands for light detection and ranging, is rapidly revolutionizing archaeology.
Instead of hacking through the jungle in search of ruins,
researchers can fly over it in an aircraft equipped with
a laser and other equipment. By firing hundreds of thousands
of laser pulses each second, they can collect data and
create a three dimensional map of the ground surface and

(04:00):
its features. LDAR was first developed by NASA in the
early nineteen seventies as a tool for space exploration. The
nineteen seventy one Apollo fifteen mission used an early LDAR
instrument to map the Moon's surface topography from orbit, and
scientists would also use it to study Mars and detail
the shape of an asteroid. But archaeologists figured out how
to adapt the technology to find ancient ruins in remote places.

(04:24):
In the early twenty teens, researchers utilized lidar to locate
Lasieu da Blanca, the white city in Honduras whose existence
had been the subject of rumor in legend since the
days of her Non Cortes. More recently, others used lidar
to scan the Cambodian jungle and uncover a fourteen hundred
year old city that would have rivaled nom Fen in
size and calm. Director Ramesh L. Shresta says that lidar

(04:48):
technology has become vastly more powerful since he began to
use it in the late nineteen nineties. In that time,
devices have gone from shooting three thousand pulses per second
to nine hundred thousand today. That was in much higher
resolution maps and has reduced the amount of time required
to cover an area such as the Maya site, essentially
making a project of this scale possible, according to shress Though,

(05:10):
though the Maya megalopolis may be dwarfed by even bigger
future ledar projects, he said researchers eventually want to map
areas that are nearly fifty eight hundred square miles that's
nearly fifteen kilometers in Guatemala and Mexico. Today's episode is
based on the article scientists use lidar to discover massive

(05:33):
lost Mayan city on how stuff works dot Com, written
by Patrick J. Kaiger. Brain Stuff is productive i Heart
Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
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