IT’s been there some 1200 years. But it’s been hidden from sight by the dense green foliage of Guatemala’s tropical rainforests.
It’s an ancient Mayan civilisation capable of having housed more than 100,000 people.
But it took modern laser technology (known as LiDAR — Light Detection and Ranging) and a survey of more than 2100 square kilometres of northern Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve to expose its existence.
The lasers can peer through the overhanging foliage, sensing what lies beneath.
National Geographic reports the scan has revealed the remains of a long lost nation.
“The LiDAR images make it clear that this entire region was a settlement system whose scale and population density had been grossly underestimated,” says Ithaca College archaeologist Thomas Garrison.
“These features are so extensive that it makes us start to wonder: is this the breadbasket of the Maya lowlands?”
But though the existence of the civilisation is new to archaeologists, evidence suggests it is not new to looters. The survey has revealed thousands of pits dug through the ruins in the search for valuable, portable relics.