Laser scanning reveals thousands of 3,000-year-old Maya 'ghosts' in the Guatemalan jungle

Using LiDAR, archaeologists have discovered thousands of ancient Mayan structures and settlements, including towers, temples and roads. 

According to Live Science, geologists in northern Guatemala used LiDAR - a remote sensing tool that uses laser beams and sensors to measure the reflection arc of these beams to identify hidden anomalies on the ground, covered by trees or modern objects - to survey the forest believed to have been settled by ancient Maya people.

The technology is particularly beneficial in areas like the rainforests of Guatemala's Mirador-Calakmul Karst basin, where lasers can penetrate thick tree canopy.

A large pyramid and other surrounding structures revealed by the survey - (Photo: ANCIENT MESOAMERICICA)

Data from the scans exceeded all expectations, revealing more than 1,000 settlements scattered across a jungle area of ​​about 1,700 ^square kilometres , connected by 100 kilometres of roads carefully built by the ancient Maya for walking.

In addition to houses, among these Mayan "ghosts" are the foundations of large pyramids, canals and reservoirs.

The discoveries not only reveal a new world, a historical period, but also provide further evidence of the "timeless" scientific and technological level of the Maya, especially in the field of building infrastructure to serve a comfortable life only slightly less than modern times.

The age of the structures is an added element to the stunningness of the discovery : They date from between 1000 BC and 250 BC , during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods of the Maya civilization.

The extent of the settlements and how they connected with each other also promises to provide important insights into how the ancient Maya lived and traded.

'For the first time, the data for a region is politically and economically integrated, something that has never been seen elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere,' said co-author Carlos Morales-Aguilar of the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. 'We can now see the entire landscape of the Maya region in this part of Guatemala.'

So what made this area so attractive that the Maya wanted to settle there in the first place?

"For the Maya, the Mirador-Calakmul limestone basin was the 'Goldilocks Zone,'" said study co-author Ross Ensley, a geologist at the Institute for Geological Research of the Maya Lowlands in Houston, US. "The Maya settled in this area because it had the right combination of highlands for settlement and lowlands for agriculture. The highlands provided limestone, their main building material. The lowlands are mostly swamps, which are favorable for wetland agriculture as well as organic-rich soils for terraced farming."

Researchers have previously used lidar to scan Mayan sites in Guatemala. In 2015, an initiative called the Mirador Basin Project conducted two large-scale surveys in the southern part of the basin, focusing on the ancient city of El Mirador. That project resulted in the mapping of 1,703 square kilometers of the area in Guatemala, according to the study.

'When I made the first bare-earth models of the ancient city of El Mirador, I was overwhelmed, ' said Morales-Aguilar. ' It was fascinating to see for the first time the large number of reservoirs, monumental pyramids, terraces, settlements and small mounds.'

Researchers hope lidar technology will help them explore parts of Guatemala that have remained a mystery for centuries.