So what's going on with this revolutionary Maya discovery?

Is it groundbreaking or hype?

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I read about it earlier today. It's pretty incredible. I'm hoping they can use it and it has just as incredible results elsewhere, not just Mesoamerica. I imagine it'll have similar success in regions of India, as well as South East Asia. Hopefully something in northern europe, as well. Honestly, I feel North America has been vastly underexplored and there's some sort of ancient civilization waiting to be identified.

>interesting topic that just got discovered
>4 posts in 4 hours
>shitposting/b8 thread
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I'm guessing most people just didn't hear about this.

So basically it's like how we found out that Troy was built on top of another Troy, or is it just that a lot was underground?

Basically they figured out that the most important Mayan city they've discovered so far, Tikal, was actually at least 10X larger than they originally believed. Not only does it have implications for finding future civilizations, it also has implications for the existing civilizations we know about and actually learning more about them. Essentially, with this technology, we'll be able to waste less time finding where to search and, ideally, be able to start moving faster and faster in the historical discovery...again, because tech makes everything go faster/easier.

Use it on mars

That it was more densely populated than imagined. It went from 5 million population estimate in the Maya region in the Classic period to 10-15 being more plausable. Also large highways some very wide, indicating heavy traffic and raised to avoid rain season floods interlinking countless cities, some of them walled. Also many fortresses, indicate warfare happened frequently. It was twice the size of medieval england and more dense. Previously, this was all mostly hidden in the jungle, although looters knew about it for a while unfortunately.
I would say it's not too surprising if you've studied the region, but it is pretty major since now there's evidence.

>In a region within a 25 kilometres (16 mi) radius of the site core and including some satellite sites, peak population is estimated at 425,000 with a density of 216 per square kilometer (515 per square mile). These population figures are even more impressive because of the extensive swamplands that were unsuitable for habitation or agriculture.

That's just in the area around Tikal.

The real implication isn't necessarily that we haven't know the Mayan civilization was likely much bigger than thought/confirmed. The implication is that they were able to map the entire thing in 67 hours. It used to take like 10 years to map a quarter mile.

Nah, surface level. They probably would have sent (a) drone(s) on an autonomous "lawnmower" pattern to map the site. LIDAR gives you a big point cloud. These things shit out and read millions of laser reflections, so while many of those points will be bouncing off the jungle, those can be filtered and you are left with the point cloud of what lies beneath.

Fuck, imagine if we find some kind of Mayan library and learn far more about everyone who lived in and near there than we ever realized we could.

Jungle niggas be posting pictures from Yavin claiming they've got history and shit.

that'd be wonderful! tech is getting us into an enlightenment age!

The Anasazi?

This technology will be used to find Atlantis. If only we could adapt it for searching coastal aquatic areas recently lost to sea level rise.

It reminds me of Michael Crichton's book "Congo".

>The results suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilization that was, at its peak some 1,200 years ago, more comparable to sophisticated cultures such as ancient Greece or China than to the scattered and sparsely populated city states that ground-based research had long suggested.
Damn, that's actually pretty cool. I wonder if Mayaboos will become a thing in our lifetime?

This and

This.

It's amazing how this works.

Bump

How does archeolgical publication work? When can we expect an article and in what journal?

Veeky Forums isn't big on archeology or anthropology. it tends to stick to hard history or b8 political topics

Let me help you out:

The Maya were the descendants of black Africans.

Forget India and Southeast Asia.

What are the implications of this to Qin Shi Huang's vast unopened tomb is even more boner inducing.

This actually is the same as what happened in the middle east and south asia. Crisis, climate change and agrarian overexplotation led to a migration abandoning the place.

I already mentioned it. Amerindians lived what middle-easterners and other craddles of civilizations lived yet they had a higher development rate.

Where there isn't cover, photogrammetry, 3d imaging made from stitching together a heap of photos, can be very helpful for mapping sites. At a paleo dig I was on we were digging up relatively recent Australian megafauna and used photogrammetry to try and map potential paleo drainage channels to work out site relations for future work.

The implications are fuck all.