Compared the LiDAR imaging on that Maya site find with old aerial photos from the 70s and it's night and day what we missed

The old photos only showed bumps in the terrain while the LiDAR revealed like 300 structures under the canopy clear as day, has anyone else gone back to check old survey sites with new tech and found stuff that was basically invisible before?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_kim401mo ago

Laughing my ass off thinking about all those archaeologists in the 70s squinting at grainy black and white photos and going "yep, just a weird hill" while there's literally a whole city hiding under the trees. I bet someone's gotta go back and dig up all those old site reports now and pencil in "actually this was a pyramid, sorry". Reminds me of when they found those massive geoglyphs in the Amazon that were totally invisible from the ground, just looked like random ditches until someone flew a drone over. LiDAR is basically cheating at this point lol.

terryallen1mo ago

That 300 number really hit me, @luna_kim40. I used to roll my eyes at the hype around LiDAR, figured it was just a fancier way to do the same old surveys. But seeing those side by side shots changed my mind completely, it's like the ground was speaking a different language this whole time.