How scientists are finding lost cities: Is this the 'City of the Monkey God'?
The alleged discovery of the legendary "" or "City of the Monkey God" in Honduras, may be disputed by some archaeologists, but none will argue that new technologies are making this a platinum age of new findings.
鈥淚t seems that every two years somebody comes out saying they鈥檝e found the White City, says听, an assistant professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.. 鈥淢any archeologists believe that The 鈥榃hite City,鈥� by its very nature, must never be found. It鈥檚 more of a legend that covers a region of many cities that were considered 鈥楲ost Cities,鈥� that depopulated due to the epidemics that swept through when the Europeans arrived, many of them large.鈥�
Dr. Morell-Hart 鈥� who did her doctoral research in Honduras and will be returning to the region this summer to study a site a few hundred miles away from where this discovery was made 鈥� explains,听听鈥淭he discoveries are all wonderful and exciting until you find the next 鈥榃hite City,鈥欌�� she says. 鈥淢ore exciting is a pattern that finally jumps out 鈥� like statues of jaguars to rulership and religious practices or something that鈥檚 strikingly different found in the region.鈥�
Ultimately, more valuable than whether this is the long, lost "White City" or not, is what the artifacts found in Honduras will tell archeologists about the culture and people who once lived there.听
Morell-Hart and other archeologists say that these are the heady days of discovery and re-discovery thanks to both changing political climates and a plethora of technological advancements that are helping bring more finds to light.
鈥淚 would have to say that we have probably only found about 40-percent of what鈥檚 out there to discover in South America,鈥� says Ben Thomas, director of programs at the听听(AIA), Boston Mass., in a phone interview.
According to Dr. Thomas, two things are happening in archeology today: 1. There is still stuff to be discovered and 2. Looking at old discoveries and finding different things thanks to new technologies.
Thomas did his field work for his doctorate in Belize and Guatemala. He now specializes in Central American and Maya cultural discoveries.
鈥淔inding a pre- or non-Maya culture is significant,鈥� Thomas says of the 鈥淲hite City鈥� announcement. 鈥淲hile we have so many advances that can help us to locate and map what might be there, someone still has to go in there and make the discovery as this team has.鈥�
While stopping short of labeling this a new age of discovery, Thomas says,鈥� We have entered a more sophisticated age of exploration.鈥�
Thomas explains that the development and honing of remote mapping technologies such as satellite-borne sensors, infrared spectrum imaging, ground-penetrating radar, camera-equipped drones, and听听(Light Detection and Ranging) have elevated archeology to a whole new level.
LIDAR was instrumental in this latest find. In听in 2012, this team enlisted the help of the听at the University of Houston, 听
A Cessna Skymaster, carrying a million-dollarlidar听scanner, flew over the valley, probing the jungle canopy with laser light. lidar鈥�"Light Detection and Ranging"鈥攊s able to map the ground even through dense rain forest, delineating any archaeological features that might be present.
When the images were processed, they revealed unnatural features stretching for more than a mile through the valley. When [Christopher Fisher, a Mesoamerican archaeologist 听from Colorado State University]听analyzed the images, he found that the terrain along the river had been almost entirely reshaped by human hands.
LIDAR, explains the US Geological Survey (USGS) website, 鈥渋s being used for a wide range of applications including high-resolution topographic mapping and 3-dimensional surface modeling as well as infrastructure and biomass studies.鈥� The technology "uses a laser scanner with up to 400,000 pulses of light per second. The laser transmits pulses and records the time delay between a light pulse transmission and reception to calculate elevation values."
Ultimately, however听"it takes scientists on the ground to actually locate, uncover and assess the find," says Thomas.
What this has translated into for archeologists, says Thomas, is the ability to not only make new discoveries, such as 鈥淭he White City,鈥� but to re-visit previously explored sites and to monitor sites that have become inaccessible due to political issues.
鈥淔or example, we can鈥檛 get into Syria to monitor sites or look for previously undiscovered pyramids in places like Egypt right now but with the range of new aerial and satellite mapping we can still have our eyes on the sites for signs of decay or disturbance, Thomas says.鈥�
In 2013,听LIDAR helped produce a听detailed map of a vast cityscape, including highways and previously undiscovered temples, hidden beneath dense vegetation at Angkor Wat, the Cambodian temple complex.听It was dubbed the lost city of Mahendraparvata.
Another example cited by Thomas is the dig at听听in Belize, where he says, 鈥淭hese archeologists in Caracol had already done a fantastic job of thoroughly mapping. Few sites in the world have been this thoroughly documented and still, they made more advances and discoveries.鈥�
鈥淲ith LIDAR this site which scientists have been all over since the 1980s, all of a sudden they saw things they hadn鈥檛 seen before,鈥� Thomas says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the fun part of archeology. It鈥檚 never over.鈥�
