Archaeologists are using artificial intelligence to investigate ancient artifacts and uncover the story of human culture. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are usually tied to aspirations for ...

The world the Maya made has been shrouded by jungle for centuries. Now, a tool called lidar is revealing its staggering scale and sophistication. An aerial view hardly hints at the true size of ...

This lidar image reveals a major Maya urban area in Mexico that was previously unknown to the scientific community. Luke Auld-Thomas, an instructor in the Anthropology Department at Northern Arizona ...

Archaeologists have found thousands of Maya structures and a lost city they named Valeriana in Mexico by using laser mapping technology, according to a new study.

The team used lidar, a laser-based detection system, to survey 50 square miles of land in Campeche, Mexico, an area largely overlooked by archaeologists. Their findings included evidence of more than ...

But LiDAR allows researchers to study much larger swathes of land quickly in the comfort of a home or lab. Auld-Thomas used publicly available LiDAR data taken for a forest monitoring project in 2013 ...

From the air, the lidar scan revealed structures like an X-ray reveals a skeleton: bones of a city stretching across the land. Ancient buildings clustered on a hilltop are revealed by a narrow ...

Archaeologists have uncovered over 6,500 previously unknown Maya structures, including a hidden city with grand pyramids, within southeast Mexico. This major discovery highlights the impressive ...

LiDAR is particularly useful for surveying dense tropical forests, such as the Maya Lowlands, where thick vegetation can obscure ancient ruins, helping researchers to "see through" the canopy. The ...

Running out of empty space: environmental lidar and the crowded ancient landscape of Campeche, Mexico. Antiquity , 2024; 98 (401): 1340 DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2024.148 Cite This Page : ...

A lidar image of previously unknown Maya structures in Mexico. Image: Auld-Thomas et al., Antiquity 2024. However, lidar is expensive. That’s where an old map comes into play—a 2013 lidar ...

Lidar technology has allowed scientists to survey large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab, uncovering anomalies in the landscape that often prove to be pyramids, family houses and ...