Mapping Ancient Civilization, in a Matter of Days

[lsanderson]

CITY LIVING A plaza in Caracol, a Maya city in Belize. Jungles surrounding it were penetrated using a new method, lidar.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 10, 2010

For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy. More

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