2000Years Old.. The Discovery Of A “Buried Kingdom” Of The Mayan Civilization That Includes Stadiums And Pyramids
A team of scientists has discovered a large, very ancient, 2,000-year-old Maya civilization in northern Guatemala, according to a research paper published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.
The team affiliated with multiple institutions in the United States, with the participation of a researcher from France and another from Guatemala, indicated that they were able to find this discovery thanks to a survey of the area using LiDAR technology.
LiDAR technology is defined as a detection system similar to radar, but it relies on laser light rather than audio signals. And in recent years, it has been used to scan parts of the dense tropical rainforest for signs of ancient civilizations. The lasers used in such systems are able to penetrate the vegetation canopies above the rainforest, revealing what is on the ground below.
In the new work, the science team flew over parts of Guatemala as part of their mapping efforts, when they came across what they describe as a vast ancient Mayan civilization.
Studying their maps, they could see that the ancient civilization was made up of more than 1,000 settlements covering about 650 square miles, most of them connected by multiple bridges.
The scientists were also able to determine that these settlements were crowded, a finding that contradicts theories that early settlements in Mesoamerica tended to be sparsely populated.
The bridges added up to 110 miles of traversable paths, making it relatively easy for people of civilization to visit other settlements.
The team noted that the road network allows for collective labor efforts. They also found evidence of platforms and large pyramids in some of the settlements, some of which served as central hubs for business, leisure and politics.
They also noted that some of the settlements had playgrounds that previous research showed were used to play a variety of sports indigenous to the area.
The team also found that the people of civilization built canals to transport water and reservoirs to stabilize it for use during periods of drought.
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