On February 1, 2018, a team of archaeologists from the US, Europe, and Guatemala announced this discovery. They discovered both large-scale agricultural areas and irrigation channels.
This discovery shows a very high level of development and “urbanization” of the Maya civilization that scientists could not imagine before.
This study estimates that around 10 million people may have lived in the Maya lowlands, meaning they may have needed such a large amount of food and engaged in such large-scale farming.
“The number of people who lived there must have been two or three times more than people say,” said anthropology professor Marcello A.Canuto of Tulane University.
The experts used a mapping technique called LiDAR, which stands for the English phrase “Zooming and detecting with light”. It emits laser waves for reflection on the ground, from which a contour image of the underground system is obtained.
Photos show that the Mayans cultivated the area on a larger scale than we thought. In some areas, 95% of the land is arable.
“Their agriculture is also intensive and therefore more sustainable than we thought, they cultivate every inch of the land without leaving a trace,” said Francisco Estrada-Belli, an associate professor at Tulane University. He also said the ancient Mayans may have partially dried up the marshes that were unsuitable for farming at first.
Large defensive fences were also found, with deep trenches and canals, the hallmarks of a highly organized workforce.
“There must have been government intervention here, because we see wide canals being dug to guide the flow,” said Thomas Garrison, associate professor of anthropology at Ithaca University in New York. In addition, he also said that this is a discovery that completely changes the situation, changing the way we study archeology about Maya.
The map of the 810 square miles (2100 km2) piece of land extended the previously known Mayan concentration of settlements. Their culture flourished between 1000 BC and 900 AD. Today, their descendants still live in this area.
In this map scan, they discovered more than 60,000 different structures, including four Mayan ceremonial centers with pyramids and squares.
Trees grow over a steep mound.Mr. Garrison said he went to the area this year with data from LiDAR to look for a road that appeared on the map. “I’ve seen it, but if I didn’t have LiDAR and knew what it was, I would have walked over it, because the area is so dense.”
Mr. Garrison also points out that in other ancient cultures, fields, roads and houses were often destroyed by later generations living and cultivating. And here this jungle grows over the fields and structures of the Mayans, both sheltering and preserving them.
“The forest, which has kept us out for so long, has become a great conservation tool so that we can now see the influence that culture has had on this land,” Mr. Garrison said.
He also said that in this area there are two Maya fortresses. LiDAR also revealed a previously undetectable structure between these two fortresses.
“This system of deep walls and moats belongs to this hilltop fortress… when I got there, one of them was 9m high,” he said.
With what LiDAR technology has to offer, within the next three years Canuto and his colleagues hope to be able to digitally map the entire Maya Reserve, which spans more than 8,341 square miles in the Peten region of Guatemala.
According to the New York Times, scientists have used similar scanning techniques to explore the ancient cities of Angkor, the center of the Khmer empire in Cambodia, including the famous city of Angkor Wat. LiDAR also has the potential to explore civilizations in the rainforests of Brazil. According to Mr. Garrison, LiDAR could also be used in other areas.