this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
96 points (98.0% liked)

World News

395 readers
300 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be a decent person
  2. No spam
  3. Add the byline, or write a line or two in the body about the article.

founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
 

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.

It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.

But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

They probably run some algorithms to look for straight lines and right angles to identify man made structure vs natural features.