LiDAR Finds A Lost City
LiDAR scanning and mapping Technology (credit: UC-Berkeley)
Finding an ancient building is one thing but discovering an entire lost city in the 21st Century is quite another. However, one thought more of a rumor for over 500 years has been detected in a remote and uninhabited corner of Central America by using a new scanning technology.
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote sensing tool that can peer through vegetation and water allowing images to be generated exposing all the geology that lies beneath. The methodology, pioneered by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory among others, has been used for natural resource and geoscience mapping. The scanners digitize radar data recombined into "layers" that show landscape details in high relief.
The technology is now upending traditional archaeological surveys. Using a low-flying airplane outfitted with a LiDAR scanner, researchers flew over a series of untouched mountain valleys where they discovered an ancient city buried under the dense rainforest canopy. Their discovery is part Indiana Jones but working with 21st Century digital media now.
The long-rumored, City of the Monkey God (la Ciudad Blanca) was in northern Honduras. The first ground surveys of the legendary citidal, which appears to have lain untouched since its inhabitants vanished in the 1500's, was covered in an article and video in the New Yorker Magazine. The catastrophic truth about the inhabitants disappearance is as fascinating and disturbing as the discovery of their city.
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