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Large-scale early Maya sites in Mexico revealed by lidar mapping technology

Archaeology is transforming our view of how ancient Maya societies developed. Use of lidar technology has now led to the discovery that large, monumental structures that aid naked-eye astronomy were built unexpectedly early.
  1. Patricia A. McAnany

    1. Patricia A. McAnany is in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.

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In archaeology, there are few watershed moments, when a technological breakthrough changes everything. But the invention of radiocarbon dating in the 1940s brought one such revolution, by providing a consistent, worldwide system for placing archaeological material in chronological order. A more-recent transformative innovation is the airborne application of a remote-sensing technique called light detection and ranging (lidar) to create a model (also known as a digital-elevation model) of the bare-surface terrain that is hidden by trees in forested areas1. Lidar is changing archaeological study of the ancient Maya in Mexico and Central America. It is increasing the speed and scale of discovery, and reshaping our understanding of the antiquity of monumental-scale landscape alteration. Writing in Nature, Inomata et al.2 provide a prime example of this in their study of the region of Tabasco in Mexico that borders the Usumacinta River.

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Nature 582, 490-492 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01570-8

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