[HN Gopher] Ancient Maya city was hidden in the jungle for more ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ancient Maya city was hidden in the jungle for more than 1k years
        
       Author : Brajeshwar
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2023-06-26 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
        
       | bazodedo wrote:
       | Im amazed that we still get such finds! I would have expected all
       | discoverable sites to have long since been exhausted due to
       | people running automated analysis programs over high res aerial
       | footage, that would turn up anything out of place. There ought to
       | be many people that would happily add "discovered ancient maya
       | city" to their resume. Perhaps foliage obscured the view? But
       | then couldnt someone just attach a gpr system to a plane?
        
         | NelsonMinar wrote:
         | "couldnt someone just attach a gpr system to a plane?"
         | 
         | That's exactly what's driving a lot of new archaeological
         | scholarship in jungle areas. It's not as simple as "just"
         | though, it takes money and time and effort.
        
           | elpakal wrote:
           | and don't forget local buy-in. can't just drop down on a
           | plane on people and start hacking away their forest (anymore)
        
         | briga wrote:
         | If you go to see them in person it becomes clear why. The
         | jungle foliage in this region is so thick that you could be
         | standing 2 feet away from an ancient pyramid and not even
         | realize that's what you're looking at. Besides that the area is
         | very hot, difficult to navigate, and not particularly safe
         | (full of narcos and rebel groups)
        
           | eddywebs wrote:
           | true, I wonder we can continue improved use of 3d mapping and
           | lidar technologies like in recent national geographic shows.
        
         | GloomyBoots wrote:
         | There was a good book about a recent discovery a few years ago,
         | _Lost City of the Monkey God_. The locals had stories about
         | some city in the jungle. The team managed to find it with
         | LIDAR, but it was a slow, difficult process. They then had to
         | land in fairly distant clearing and hike to the location. From
         | there the team had trouble finding ruins even when they had
         | their exact location, even once standing in right the middle of
         | the city. The jungle hides a _lot_. The team members also came
         | down with cutaneous leishmaniasis. Finding locations might be
         | getting easier, but I imagine it would be difficult to find
         | people with the right combination of skill and willingness to
         | die a slow, agonizing, and disfiguring death to actually
         | excavate some of them.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-06-26 23:01 UTC)