ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS - Hidden Mayan Road Network Uncovered in Yucatan Rainforest Using Laser Technology

the Maya they're one of the most iconic civilizations in world history city building experts of astronomy practitioners of brutal warfare and human sacrifice in their view to ensure the continuation of the universe ever since their lost kingdoms and city-states were rediscovered in the Yucatan rainforest in the 1800s they've captivated people all over the world [Music] coated in trees their cities might have been at the time but during their heyday some 1000 years before the Maya had battled the forces of nature and one carving an astonishingly complex agricultural society out of sweltering jungle over the span of more than a thousand years hundreds of cities were built mostly independent from each other though sometimes ruled over by vast Confederations and proto empires adorned by beautiful artwork of metal and stone their ruins can be found all over what is now Mexico Guatemala Belize and Honduras towered over by vast temples expansive plazas and of course pyramids [Music] during a time when London and Paris held little more than a few thousand people the likes of Chichen itzá Tikal and Palenque held upwards of 40,000 their suburbs sprawling four miles into a rich agricultural landscape but then in the years around 800 AD the people here simply packed up their belongings and left returning back to the forest leaving their colossal cities behind them as a testament to how great civilizations can rise in the most unlikely of places and of course how far they can fall [Music] the collapse of the Maya remains one of the most enigmatic of all historical mysteries but it is the century leading up to the collapse that we will look at today for the last couple of years fresh revelations in the Yucatan aided by laser mapping from the sky have begun to drastically alter nearly everything we know about this lost culture this was a far larger far more populous landscape than most archaeologists could ever have imagined now in 2020 detailed mapping of an Imperial Road 100 kilometers long is providing astonishing new insights into this iconic land let's take a look [Music] by the time the Spanish arrived in the Americas in the early 16th century sailing that's Howard ships over the horizon in search of wealth and plunder the Mayan cities had mostly long since declined the victims of environmental degradation and an increasingly top-heavy aristocratic elite being unable to provide for their people newer smaller settlements lingered on not too far away from the sights of their ancestors but soon enough these two became history as much as 90% of their inhabitants being annihilated by European disease their stories gone forever by 1839 when explorers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood arrived to explore the jungles of Guatemala the vast majority of Maya sites had long since been reclaimed by the jungle untouched for centuries save howler monkeys and Jaguars fragments of this lost society had been discovered before though usually being attributed to long-lost tribes of Israel Egyptians ancient Greeks and even Atlanteans Stevens and Catherwood however knew better as far as they were concerned the evidence overwhelmingly suggested that this was in fact a native tradition unique in the world thus a new era of exploration was begun opening up a vast plethora of sites for archaeological study over the century and more to come an amazing array of material goods and architecture was found the forest is so thick here that in many areas cities are still being rediscovered today perhaps most intriguing of all however were the intricate symbols found all over the place some scholars even suggested this to be a form of hieroglyphic writing like in ancient Egypt during the 20th century due to monumental efforts by scholars this turned out to be true and the Maya code was deciphered revealing illiterate sophisticated people obsessed with ritual astronomical observations calendrical timekeeping and sacrifice in order to keep the world moving often this came in the form of self sacrifice by dynasties of kings and queens passing parts of their own bodies in elaborate rituals other times in the form of the killing of captives human sacrifice during a time when Europe toiled in the grip of the Dark Ages beset by Vikings horse nomads and pirates my own scientists and priests set about intense rituals constructing elaborate Li decorated pyramids aligned to precise astronomical observations not too dissimilar to stone circles and sites in Europe albeit far more spectacular and advanced having been left to develop in isolation like stone circles these are giant Sun dials and calendars astonishingly made by a people possessing neither the wheel nor any pack animals to speak of the Maya script tells us the histories of elaborate lineages of dynasts wars between kingdoms spanning generation after generation though amazingly some of the most important cities discussed in the writings have never satisfactorily been located either being built over by newer towns or still being out there in the rain forests but of course people don't just live in cities the Maya world was built on agriculture and until recently although it has long been hypothesized that vast swaths of territory had once been deforested farmland that world outside the larger settlements was largely unknown now in the 21st century laser mapping technology is completely revolutionising our understanding of this ancient civilization in 2010 the city of caracal was the first myocyte scanned using this formally military-grade technology in the space of a single day surveying and covering more ground than would have previously been possible in years this was a game-changer a paradigm shift still very much in force today and soon enough the new TAC would be used all over the world in cambodia arabia and of course extensively in the americas in 2012 the Tarasque and city of anga mukou in western Mexico a rival city to the aztecs was revealed to have as many buildings as modern Manhattan [Music] and perhaps most interestingly of all a vast series of towns and cities in the jungles of Eastern Honduras an entire lost civilization was revealed I just made a full-length documentary on this topic over on my main channel which you can watch after you've finished this video and don't forget to subscribe in 2018 when lidar was used extensively in the Yucatan's Maya biosphere reserve more than 60,000 previously unknown man-made structures were revealed the Maya civilization had been far more extensive and populous than ever thought before millions of people turning this forested Peninsula into a maze of well-ordered villages towns and cities intersected by vast tracts of farmland it must have been a sight to behold as we shall see expertly built elevated roads connected these settlements not too dissimilar to those built by the Romans in 2016 17 of them were mapped in northern Guatemala linking the city of El Mirador to a network of neighboring sites in the last couple of years one in particular stretching for some 100 kilometers from Coba to yuk sana has been of great interest to archaeologists for this is the longest known to exist and now it's been surveyed using glider a mile road is called a sac Bay a white road because of the huge limestone boulders used as a base constructed to remain flat over uneven terrain with plaster then applied to make the surface similar to Roman concrete these are engineering marvels and this one is a hundred kilometres long and 1,300 years old also included in the work would be the transportation of slabs to the roadway not to mention the gathering and preparation of food and water to supply this immense workforce in the forest an impressive logistical feat suggesting a highly developed infrastructure the Yak sooner Koba wrote today is in an overgrown and forgotten state in a generally uninhabited area when it was first surveyed back in the 1930s only from the ground it took so much more time to do all the way along the road about every 6 to 13 miles or so smaller causeways crisscross the main path but there is only one city where all roads lead the place it originated the city of Koba which once controlled the eastern Peninsula when Koba experienced a period of expansion in the 7th century perhaps military cultural or economic or even a combination of all its ruler a mighty Queen spoken off on the stelae at the city is thought to have commissioned it in order to invade the rival city of yuk sooner an older and smaller City and the middle of the peninsula [Music] the road is thought to date from the end of the late classic period into the beginning of the terminal classic when yuck sooner was razed to the ground by the post classic powerhouse chichén itzá never recovering when it was first discovered the initial excavators surmised that it might have run all the way to Chichen itzá though it was difficult to say for sure given the sheer scale of the undertaking now in 2020 finally we have more definitive answers the road did not run straight as initially supposed instead the warrior queen may have built it to wind through the countryside it actually gradually veered and swayed in its course connecting pre-existing sites along the way many of them entirely unknown before the lidar survey this deviation indicates the regional population spread along a hundred kilometers of road was just as important as the city of yack sooner itself a landscape of vast amounts of smaller cities and towns each one perhaps populated by around a thousand or 2,000 people surrounded by farmland and other natural resources previous conclusions of course hadn't accounted for this landscape being part of the motivation for the road [Music] the team of archaeologists responsible for the lidar are now investigating the impact of the road on the area pinpointing sites along its course to excavate to see if items here are more similar to Coba or Hyuk Sunnah in order to ascertain whether actual conquest had happened excavating some of the household clusters a monumental task made much easier by lidar which will be used again at sites along the road many of them completely unknown to us previously ranging from simple dwellings to vast plazas monumental structures temples and pyramids investigations continue and lidar is providing new opportunities to study the past all over the world if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like and subscribe and head on over to my main channel history time to watch my latest full-length documentary the search for the lost city of the monkey god in many ways it's a follow-on from this one and it's a completely incredible story so I highly recommend going over and watching it you've been watching archeology news don't forget to Like and subscribe tell me what you think in the comments and I'll see you on the next one [Applause] you

Channel: Pete Kelly

Views: 865,646

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Keywords: Maya, mayans, archaeology, archaeology news, mesoamerica, ancient history, ancient americas, aztecs, incas, Maya collapse

Id: uqxGfyBPMP4

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020