ANCIENT MAYA CITY WITH 3,000-YEAR-OLD SUPER HIGHWAYS DISCOVERED IN GUATEMALA

Sat 21 January 2023:

A recent high-tech research has uncovered approximately 1,000 ancient Maya villages, including 417 that were previously unknown, concealed for centuries by the deep forests of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico. These settlements were connected by what may have been the world’s first highway network.

According to a statement released on Monday by a group from Guatemala’s FARES anthropological research institution, which is in charge of the so-called LiDAR studies, it is the most recent finding of around 3,000-year-old Maya centers and associated infrastructure.

The findings were first released in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica last month.

All of the newly-identified structures were built centuries before the largest Maya city-states emerged, ushering in major human achievements in math and writing.

LiDAR technology uses planes to shoot pulses of light into dense forest, allowing researchers to peel away vegetation and map ancient structures below.

Among the details revealed in the latest analysis are the ancient world’s first-ever extensive system of stone “highways or super-highways,” according to the researchers.

Around 177 km of spacious roadways have been revealed so far, with some measuring around 40 meters wide and elevated off the ground by as much as 16 feet.

As part of the Cuenca Karstica Mirador-Calakmul study, which extends from northern Guatemala’s Peten jungle to southern Mexico’s Campeche state, researchers have also identified pyramids, ball game courts plus significant water engineering, including reservoirs, dams and irrigation canals.

“It shows the economic, political and social complexity of what was happening simultaneously across this entire area,” said lead researcher Richard Hansen.

The most recent discoveries are from the so-called middle to late pre-classic Maya period, which lasted from roughly 1,000 BC to 350 BC. Many of the settlements are thought to have been under the control of the modern-day metropolis El Mirador.

That was more than five centuries before the civilization reached its classical height, when dozens of significant urban centers flourished throughout modern-day Mexico and Central America.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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