That larger population was supported by an even more sophisticated infrastructure than experts had previously understood. Now, experts believe the area supported up to 11 million inhabitants. Previously, experts had projected that, at the peak of the Mayan Classical period from about 250-900AD, about one to two million people lived in the cities and towns of the central lowlands. The 60,000 structures that were revealed included temples, pyramids and causeways.īut the majority of the structures were platforms for houses, a crucial piece of information for population estimates. “There are three to four times as many structures in the landscape as we had thought,” says Garrison, who is also one of the researchers for the Pacunam Lidar Initiative. But the results from the first phase have already shifted how archaeologists see the Maya civilisation. Researchers are still combing through the 2019 data.
That would make the project the largest Lidar survey not only in Central America, but in the world. Their hope in the further phases – the second one of which took place in summer 2019, while I was there – is to triple the coverage area. In the first phase, whose results were published in 2018, they mapped 2,100km of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Using Lidar, in 2016 the Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage (Pacunam) launched the largest archaeological survey ever undertaken of the Maya lowlands. By measuring how much time it takes for the laser to return to its point of origin, it can create extraordinarily detailed maps and 3D representations. Lidar works by beaming lasers at a site – whether up close, from a hand-held scanner or at a distance, such as from an aeroplane. And what Lidar has shown us is that we weren't very good at it. “So much of our time is spent mapping and just trying to find places. “The Lidar makes it so that, as archaeologists, we don't have to spend all of our time just figuring out what's there – and instead, we can really focus in and excavate and address questions that we want to,” says Thomas Garrison, a Maya archaeologist at the University of Texas at Austin. But the jungle makes structures particularly difficult to find, or identify. It also was once the heart of the Maya civilisation, whose city-states ruled Central America from about 750BC until the Spanish conquest of the 1600s. It is the largest protected rainforest north of the Amazon. The Maya Biosphere Reserve covers 21,602 sq km – nearly one-fifth of Guatemala – of forest, wetlands, rivers, lakes and savannas. It was Lidar data that went into the map Anavisca is now holding.īy stripping away the jungle canopy and revealing the topography beneath, including long-forgotten sites and monuments, Lidar has been especially helpful in jungles like this one. But it wasn’t until recently that proof came in the form of Lidar – a type of remote sensing technology currently transforming archaeology. Anavisca wants to show me something few tourists see, and which far fewer would recognise: a Maya pyramid, unexcavated and overgrown with jungle.Īnavisca and his colleagues, who work in archaeology and conservation at Tikal, have long suspected that this hill is a pyramid.
Today we’ve gone off the beaten track completely. Birdsong fills the air, spider monkeys loop across the treetops, and at dusk, the area around the Lost World is taken over by coatimundis – long-tailed, raccoon-like mammals that nose through the ground for insects. But even on the well-trodden, signposted tourist route, it’s impossible to forget you’re in the rainforest. Once the greatest city in the Maya world, today Tikal is Guatemala’s most famous archaeological site. He grins, quipping: “The Lost World” – one of Tikal’s best-known ceremonial complexes – “is that way.” I’m not sure how he can tell. “Are we lost?” I ask finally, wiping sweat from my forehead. We stop several times, turn, retrace our steps. Where we’re going looks exactly like where we came from, a tangle of green, glossy leaves spiked with elegant trunks.
It’s 32C and 100% humidity, typical for Tikal, Guatemala, in June.
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