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Just read about the new lidar work at Caracol versus the old hand-drawn maps
The old maps from the 1980s took years to make and missed a lot of the smaller structures and roads. The new lidar survey in 2023 covered over 200 square kilometers in days and showed thousands of new buildings. It feels like we're finally seeing the full picture of that Maya city. Do you think tech like this is making traditional field survey obsolete, or is there still a big need for boots on the ground?
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emery3561mo ago
This actually reminds me of something weird that happened when I was helping a friend with a metal detecting project out in the woods behind his house. We had this old map from the 1970s that showed an old homestead there, but when we actually walked the property with our detectors, we found stuff nowhere near where the map said. Turns out the map was just wrong, probably drawn by someone who only glanced at the land from a car window. But the cool thing was, even with the bad map, we wouldn't have found half the stuff if we hadn't been out there tripping over roots and spotting the weird lumps in the ground. The lidar would have shown us where the structures were, but it wouldn't have told us the old well was full of broken pottery or that the ground was weirdly soft in one spot because of an old root cellar. So yeah, the maps get better, but there's something about actually walking the ground and just... feeling things out.
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the_drew1mo ago
You said we're finally seeing the full picture, but does lidar actually show what's underground? I heard it can't see inside structures or find artifacts. Someone still has to dig to know what those buildings were for or how people lived. The tech finds where to look, but the dirt tells the story.
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