Imaging Technology Reveals Hidden Ancient Maya City with Buildings

To the bare eye and on archeologists' map, it gave the look of every other hill amid the undulating panorama of Tikal, the historic Maya city-kingdom with inside the lowlands of northern Guatemala.

But while researchers zoomed in on an aerial picture using Modern-day imaging technology with laser scanning system known as LiDAR (aka for "Light Detection and Ranging"), they may virtually see the form of a human-made shape hidden beneath centuries of gathered soil.

Modern Day Imaging Technology on Hidden Ancient Discoveries

Tikal known today as Guatemala might have been one of the most primitive settlers in the ancient Maya empire in 200-900 CE, that could have a population of 90,000 people (about the seating capacity of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum).

Using Modern-day imaging the LiDAR scanning equipment, researchers discovered evidence of the development being a natural area. The hidden ruins would look like it would match with the buildings design in Teotihuacan where a city was established long before the Aztecs were built by an unknown tribe.

What makes the discovering even more surprising is that Tikal has been searched and explored ever since the 1950s - it is one of the historic cities that we know most about. And all this time, there was section of it hidden from view.

The building a pyramid, it grew to become out as an historical neighborhood that included a massive enclosed courtyard fringed with smaller buildings. But these structures had been distinctive from any others known to exist at Tikal. They had the distinct shape, orientation, and different points of structure normally located in Teotihuacan, the historical city close to what is now Mexico City, more than 800 miles to the west of Tikal. On closer examination, the Tikal constructions were made from mud plaster as a substitute than the normal Maya limestone, suggesting some try to build replicas. They additionally matched the 15.5-degree east-of-north orientation of Teotihuacan's buildings.

"The similarity of the small print was once stunning," says Stephen Houston an Archaeologist from Brown University.

Guided with the aid of the LiDAR images, Edwin Román-Ramírez, the director of the South Tikal Archaeological Project, started out a series of excavations closing summer.

Tunneling into the ruins, his group located construction and burial practices, ceramics, and weaponry regular of early fourth-century Teotihuacan. From an incense burner decorated with a photo of the Teotihuacan rain god to darts made from green obsidian from central Mexico, the artifacts endorse that the site may want to have been a quasi-autonomous settlement at the center of Tikal.

What is Imaging Technology?

From the word Imaging it is the illustration or reproduction of an object's form particularly a visual representation an example is the formation of an image. While Imaging technology is the application of substances and methods to create, preserve, or replicate images an example of an imaging technology is a Lidar. The Lidar is also called as "laser scanning" or "3D scanning." The technology makes use of eye-safe laser beams to create a 3D representation of the surveyed environment.