Technology AI, Science and New Things
Laser-assisted mapping is revealing an apparently unending series of pre-Columbian cities in Mesoamerica’s jungles, the latest of which may have been the site of a rare defeat in battle for the Aztecs.
Guiengola, south-east of Mexico City in Oaxaca province, has long been thought of as a fortress built by the Zapotecs, a civilisation that lasted about eight centuries to the mid-16th century.
But Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis of McGill University used aerial lidar topographical mapping to establish that it was a bustling city the size of nearly 900 football pitches with multiple temples, three open plazas and 15 “elite residences”.
Celis’s study was published last November in Ancient Mesoamerica but not reported more widely until the Art Newspaper wrote it up last week.
