The finding of "superhighways" suggests that the ancient Mayan civilization was more advanced than previously thought

()– With the dense vegetation of the northern Guatemalan rainforests hiding its 2,000-year-old remnants, it was previously impossible to see the full extent of the ancient Maya way of life.

But laser technology has helped researchers uncover a previously unknown 1,683-square-kilometre Mayan archaeological site that offers startling new insights into ancient Mesoamericans and their civilization.

The researchers detected the vast reservoir in the Mirador-Calakmul karst basin in northern Guatemala using the LiDAR technology (Light Detection and ranging), a laser mapping system that allows detecting structures under the thick treetops. The resulting map showed an area made up of 964 settlements spread over 417 interconnected Maya cities, towns and villages.

A 177-kilometre network of raised stone walkways, or causeways, linking communities reveals that early civilization harbored an even more complex society than previously thought, according to a recent analysis of architectural groupings published in the academic journal Ancient Mesoamerica.

“They are the first superhighway system that we have in the world,” said the study’s lead author, Richard Hansen, a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University. “The amazing thing about (the causeways) is that they link all these cities together like a spider’s web … forming one of the earliest and earliest state societies in the Western Hemisphere.”

Rising above the seasonal swamps and dense forest flora of the Maya lowlands, the causeways formed “a network of implicit social, political, and economic interactions” with additional implications for “governance strategies,” according to the study. to how difficult it would have been to build them.

“Superhighways” and society

The roads were composed of a mixture of mud and quarry stone between several layers of limestone cement.

The Maya likely built the causeways using a process similar to the one they used to build their pyramids: creating 10- to 15-foot stone boxes, then filling, stacking and leveling them, according to Hansen. Several of these causeways were up to 40 meters wide, almost half the size of an American football field.

In the Mayan language, the word for causeway is “Sacebe”, which translates as “white path”. Atop the causeways was a thick layer of white plaster, which would have helped increase visibility at night, since the plaster reflected moonlight, Hansen said.

Causeways were built and raised above the swamps and dense forest flora using layers of mud, quarried stone, and limestone cement. On top of the causeways was a thick layer of white plaster. Credit: University of Cambridge

“In the Mayan region there were no pack animals (…) and we don’t think they had wheeled vehicles on these roads, like the Roman roads, like chariots or whatever, but they were certainly built for people to interact, communicated and probably traveled between sites,” said Marcello Canuto, professor of anthropology and director of the Central America Research Institute at Tulane University.

Canuto, who was not involved in this study, was co-director of an investigation that used the same LiDAR technology to reveal more than 60,000 ancient Mayan structures in 2018.

The roads “were efforts that involved a lot of people, a lot of work and coordination,” Canuto said. “These are complex work projects that would have required coordination and some kind of hierarchy.”

Advanced laser mapping technology

LiDAR technology has been used to detect the remains of the earliest Maya civilizations since 2015, when two large-scale surveys of the southern half of the Mirador-Calakmul karst basin were taken. Technology allows these discoveries to be made without harming tropical rainforests.

Light waves are emitted from an aircraft flying over the area, which bounce off objects below and return to the sensor. Like sonar, which uses sound to locate structures, the LiDAR sensor records the time it takes for each pulse to return and creates a three-dimensional map of the environment.

“Imagine you’re in Poughkeepsie, New Jersey, and that’s all you can see, but you might catch this thing we call the Beltway, true, but everything else is covered in jungle… you’ll have no idea what this beltway could connect New York to Philadelphia,” Canuto said. “LiDAR is telling us that everything we’ve found archaeologically in the last 100 years, here and there, is everywhere… LIDAR allows us to connect all the dots.”

According to Hansen, the researchers plan to collect more samples and possibly locate more settlements using LiDAR technology this month to continue their research on the Maya civilization.