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Post: Discover the cities and the first road “network” of the Maya.

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New high-tech surveys have revealed nearly 1,000 ancient Maya settlements, including 417 previously unknown cities linked by the world’s first highways and hidden for thousands of years in the dense jungles of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico.

It is the latest discovery of nearly 3,000-year-old Maya sites and related infrastructure, according to a statement released Monday by a team at the Vares Anthropological Research Foundation in Guatemala, which oversees what it calls the LIDAR surveys.

The results were first published last month in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.

All of the newly discovered structures were built centuries before the rise of the greatest Maya city, which was followed by great human advances in mathematics and writing.

LIDAR technology uses aircraft to capture pulses of light in dense forests, allowing researchers to clear vegetation and study ancient buildings below.

Among the details found in the most recent analysis, the researchers said, was the first system of its kind in the ancient world with “highways or hyperhighways” extended from rocky paths.

So far, around 177 kilometers of roads have been discovered, some of which are around 40 meters wide and up to five meters above the ground.

As part of the Cuenca Carstica Mirador-Calakmul survey, which extends from the Petén jungle in northern Guatemala to the state of Campeche in southern Mexico, researchers also discovered pyramids and a ball court, as well as techniques for hydraulic engineering, including reservoirs. Dams and irrigation canals.

Source: Al Ittihad

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