Pew pew! For science! Lasers map ancient Mayan temples

Archaeologists using a sort of laser-based radar were able to map 80 square miles of jungle-covered terrain around Caracol—an ancient Mayan city in Belize—in just four days. Compare to decades' worth of bug-beset, physically grueling on-the-ground mapping, which failed to turn up evidence of house mounds, roads and farms the laser mapping spotted with ease.

I will give you a moment to "Woah".

Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a fun-to-say technology that uses information gathered via reflected laser pulses to produce 3-D images. To map Caracol, researchers rigged lidar up to a plane that flew back and forth over the site. Enough of the laser pulses reached the ground and pinged back to the plane that copious trees couldn't get in the way of accurate maps.

This isn't the first time archaeologists have used remote sensing technologies to study ancient civilizations, or the first time lidar has been used this way. (I'd recommend checking out the cool work Payson Sheets from the University of Colorado has done with NASA since the 1980s, using satellite and infrared photography to find Central American villages buried under volcanic ash.) What is different is scope of this project. In the past, particularly in tropical areas, remote sensing was something you used to spot features, like an indentation that could mark a roadway, which might not be visible from the surface. Then, you'd take that information and go do some proper digging. Remote sensing helped you find a site, but shovels and eyeballs did the real mapping.

Caracol is different. Here, technology isn't just augmenting traditional archaeology, it's kind of replacing it, to a certain extent. Now, we can know more, faster, and with less backbreaking labor.

NYT: Using lasers to map ancient civilization in a matter of days

Image courtesy Flickr user dmuth, via CC

• [Teller]

  With this success, the project will now double in size – to ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

  Give ‘em another zero. Fly that plane over Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, the burial mounds in Area 51. This sounds like terrific technology.

• [Anonymous]

  I’d have to say my favorite tech is pretty much the LIDAR.

  • [Anonymous]

    I see you, Anon. Lidar = Liger. Well played.

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  Doesn’t it take months to reduce four days worth of LIDAR data? Maybe I’m behind the times again, though…

• [Anonymous]

  Back in the mid 90s, I worked for a company called Cyra Technologies. They built the first commercial LIDAR unit. (I was the prototype builder) Eventually Cyra was bought by Leica Geosystems, but their LIDAR was pretty awesome. They used it mainly for Chevron oil derricks for 3d mapping of all of the pipes. (Fire officials could follow the map in thick smoke because the pipe depths were listed).. They even used the device to map the cave that was used for Starship Troopers, where the brain bug was.

• [loonquawl]

  “In the past, particularly in tropical areas, remote sensing was something you used to spot features, like an indentation that could mark a roadway, which might not be visible from the surface. Then, you’d take that information and go do some proper digging. Remote sensing helped you find a site, but shovels and eyeballs did the real mapping.

  Caracol is different. Here, technology isn’t just augmenting traditional archaeology, it’s kind of replacing it, to a certain extent. Now, we can know more, faster, and with less backbreaking labor.”
  —
  Huh? They now have an accurate map of the ground level, which does exactly the thing you said was bygones: Tell archeologists where something is buried (if the buried thing influences ground level).
  —
  The cool new feature is the area-resolution combo, and the fact that they managed to get reliable data through the white noise of foliage.

• [GuidoDavid]

  Laser + jungle + ancient temples. Can you blame me if all I can think of is Silver Killer gorillas?