Using a revolutionary technology known as LiDAR (short for “Light Detection And Ranging”), scholars digitally removed the tree canopy from aerial images of the now-unpopulated landscape, revealing the ruins of a sprawling pre-Columbian civilization that was far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed. A National Geographic special, "Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings," will focus on some of these finds, including a seven-story pyramid so covered in vegetation that it practically melts into the jungle. The project mapped more than 800 square miles (2,100 square kilometers) of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Petén region of Guatemala, producing the largest LiDAR data set ever obtained for archaeological research. XMAKABATUN MEXICO WITZNA HOLMUL TIKAL GUATEMALA Maya City AREA ENLARGED Lidar Study Area 20 mi MAYA REGION 20 km SOREN WALLJASPER, NG STAFF SOURCE: WILD BLUE MEDIA/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 
 
 The results suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilization that was, at its peak some 1,200 years ago, more comparable to sophisticated cultures such as ancient Greece or China than to the scattered and sparsely populated city states that ground-based research had long suggested. “But with the new LiDAR-based evidence from Central America and [Cambodia’s] Angkor Wat, we now have to consider that complex societies may have formed in the tropics and made their way outward from there.” 
 
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 “LiDAR is revolutionizing archaeology the way the Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized astronomy,” said Francisco Estrada-Belli, a Tulane University archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer. They may have functioned as causeways during the swampy rainy season, she said, or as platforms for processions.  GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Thousands of previously unknown ancient Maya structures, including pyramids, palaces and causeways, have been revealed in Guatemala following an investigation by a team of international archaeologists using ground-penetrating laser technology. “Many of these new sites are only new to us; they are not new to looters,” said Marianne Hernandez, president of the PACUNAM Foundation.
– Only a handful of ancient Mayan temples rise above a dense jungle of trees in Guatemala. But what's obscured by the thick foliage, revealed for the first time, is evidence of a sprawling civilization to rival ancient Greece or China. Using LiDAR technology (Light Detection And Ranging), which measures wavelengths from laser pulses aimed at the ground, scientists digitally removed the jungle to reveal more than 60,000 previously unknown Mayan structures like palaces, fortifications, farms, irrigation systems, and raised highways connecting nearly all ancient cities across 800 square miles in northern Guatemala, report Live Science and National Geographic. "We'll need 100 years to go through all [the data] and really understand what we're seeing," says researcher Francisco Estrada-Belli. But already it's apparent that the civilization has been "grossly underestimated," says archaeologist Thomas Garrison. The new data show a civilization twice the size of medieval England at its peak 1,200 years ago. And though population estimates previously hovered around 5 million, expansive irrigation and terracing systems and wide highways indicate there might've been "10 to 15 million people there—including many living in low-lying, swampy areas that many of us had thought uninhabitable," Estrada-Belli says. Walls, fortresses, and ramparts also suggest war was "large-scale and systematic" and "endured over many years" not just "toward the end of the civilization," says Garrison. One of the coolest discoveries, however, was a 100-foot pyramid in the heart of the city of Tikal, which was previously assumed to be a small mountain, reports Reuters. More discoveries are likely to be made as scientists plan to map 5,000 square miles of Guatemala's lowlands during the ongoing project. (The Maya parried one collapse before the fatal blow.)