It's tempting to think that humans have a bird's-eye view of pretty much all of human history—we have a solid idea, that is, of who was doing what, when, and where for the last few thousand years.
But we're increasingly realizing that we're nowhere near that certain:
[S]cientists have discovered that ancient cities really did exist in the Amazon. And while urban ruins remain extremely difficult to find in thick, remote forests, a key technology has helped change the game. Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. The new images reveal, in detail, a stronghold of the socially complex Casarabe Culture (500-1400 C.E.) with urban centers boasting monumental platform and pyramid architecture. Raised causeways connected a constellation of suburban-like settlements, which stretched for miles across a landscape that was shaped by a massive water control and distribution system with reservoirs and canals.
Scientists to ancient Amazonians when they discover something like this:
Here's how it's done:
[T]he team conducted airborne lidar mapping of six different areas, ranging in size from about 4 square miles to 32 square miles, for a bird's eye view of what was the heartland of Bolivia's Casarabe culture between about 500 and 1400 C.E. From an aircraft, a lidar system fires down a grid of infrared beams, hundreds of thousands per second, and when each beam strikes something on the Earth's surface it bounces back with a measure of distance. This produces an enormous cloud of data points, which can be fed into computer software that creates high resolution images in which scientists can digitally deforest the Amazon. By scrubbing away trees the maps reveal the Earth's surface and the archaeological features on it. In this case, the images clearly showed 26 unique sites, including 11 that were previously unknown.
Lasers, man!
Here's a great six-minute rundown of how these incredible discoveries came about:
Folks built an amazing jungle city 1500 years ago and other folks found it using amazing technology today. Well done all around!
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