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Atharaphelun t1_iuc8vp0 wrote

And for reference, Calakmul was one of the two Mayan "superpowers", the other being the city of Tikal, its rival. Each city built up a network of client city-states and alliances which contended with each other, much like Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. And like Classical Greece, there was a third, bigger and more powerful external power that exerted direct and indirect influence upon the Maya world at this time, which was the great city of Teotihuacan in the Central Mexico Valley (which played a role much like the Persian Empire in Classical Greece).

The rivalry of Tikal and Calakmul is a rather epic tale which led to constantly changing fortunes for either side (with Teotihuacan occasionally intervening by deposing Mayan rulers and installing dynasties backed by Teotihuacan, as what happened in Tikal, Copán, and Quiriguá), and ultimately ending, for as yet to be universally agreed upon reasons, in the Classic Maya Collapse, a sort of second Dark Age of the Mayan world (the first one being the societal collapse at the end of the Preclassic Maya period called the Preclassic Maya Collapse, the reasons for which are even less known than the Classic Maya Collapse).

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cpatrick1983 t1_iuca9eo wrote

That is an incredible story - is there any additional literature that one can pickup about the extensive history between the different cities?

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AbsoZed t1_iucq754 wrote

Not literature per se, but The Fall of Civilizations podcast has a good episode on the history of these two cities prior to and during the Classic Maya Collapse.

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marketrent OP t1_iubd787 wrote

Excerpt:

>Although the number of people who lived at Calakmul during the height of the Snake King’s rule was not a complete surprise because of previous mapping and archaeological investigations by the Autonomous University of Campeche and INAH [Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia], the team was astonished at the scale and degree of urban construction.

>Immense apartment-style residential compounds have been identified throughout the surveyed area, some with as many as 60 individual structures, the seats of large households composed of extended families and affiliated members. These large residential units were clustered around numerous temples, shrines, and possible marketplaces, making Calakmul one of the largest cities in the Americas at 700 AD.

>But that’s not all the team was able to see.

>“We were also able to see that the magnitude of landscape modification equaled the scale of the urban population,” explains [UCalgary’s] Reese-Taylor. “All available land was covered with water canals, terraces, walls, and dams, no doubt to provide maximum food and water security for the city dwellers.”

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badkarmavenger t1_iuc80n2 wrote

Is this the "Lost City of the Monkey God"? I bought a book about it, and I haven't gotten to it yet.

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bipolar_heathen t1_iuct76f wrote

Nope, the "lost city of the monkey god" is located in Honduras and Calakmul is in Mexico. There were several developed civilizations in South America so there are probably many cities yet to be found!

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mouse_8b t1_iudomw3 wrote

Different city, great book though.

I also recommend The Lost City of Z for anyone who is interested in modern jungle exploration.

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InternationalBand494 t1_iubwt7u wrote

That is really cool! I had no idea how sophisticated cities were at that time in the Americas

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mtcwby t1_iuf26o5 wrote

Lidar and photogrammetry is pretty remarkable at showing manmade structures despite vegetation. When you see the non-colored points the lines become very apparent. On my ranch I had phone line run and they took a dozer and created a path the trench along. After 10 years of the brush and grass growing up it was pretty much indistinguishable to the naked eye. A drone flight and review of the point cloud made the dozer path stand out like a sore thumb although it was still impossible to see in the pictures.

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symmetrical_kettle t1_iuczpeg wrote

Anyone else REALLY misunderstand the title and think it meant that archeologists discovered evidence that the ancient Maya had LiDAR technology in their tropical megapolis?

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adfdub t1_iuep9d4 wrote

Yes I read the title like 5 times before I figured out that the ancient civilization didn't have lidar tdchnology.

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[deleted] t1_iudoc8d wrote

We've almost certainly only scratched the surface of ancient civs across the world.

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hughk t1_iuefikk wrote

How do they penetrate the tree cover? Isn't there going to be a lot of reflection from leaves? I know tree cover is normally Farr from 100% but it must still must be quite a challenge.

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Northern_Chap t1_iueo0cg wrote

The algorithms can determine differences in height returns from the thousands of readings and determine the difference between ground and canopy.

Most returns may find canopy in this scenario, but when there are sporadic but consistent drops in heights it can determine if it is an outlier/error or part of the ground etc.

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mistoplus t1_iuempwf wrote

You are right, most of the measurements correspond to the forest canopy. However, the latest lidar sensors use very high frequencies and shifting angles, so some laser beams do get to the ground. The resulting point clouds are then classified by applying different algorithms (High vegetation, low vegetation, ground, etc.) and you can apply filters to create a surface from assumed ground points only. It's not perfect, but still very very good.

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