Unearthing History: How Technology Is Transforming Archaeology
Unearthing History: How Technology Is Transforming Archaeology
May 06, 2013 1:00 PM
For centuries, explorers tried to find la Ciudad Blanca, a fabled city in the rain forests of Central America. Dense jungle impeded efforts to uncover it. Douglas Preston tells the story of a team who used light detection technology to survey the iconic ruins from the air.
Transcript:
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
Legend has it that the rainforest of Mosquitia hid La Ciudad Blanca, the White City. For centuries, explorers tried to find the fabled city in the jungle of Nicaragua and Honduras. Protected by white water, coral snakes, stinging plants and brutal topography, the White City remained an archeologist dream. But with a new application of recent technology, a documentary filmmaker, not an archeologist, found the White City.
In The New Yorker magazine, Douglas Preston tells the story of Steve Elkin's amazing discoveries. Doug Preston is an author and contributing writer at National Geographic, The Atlantic and Smithsonian magazine. His piece, "The El Dorado Machine," is in the May 6th edition of The New Yorker, and he joins us from his home in Santa Fe. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
DOUGLAS PRESTON: Thank you.
CONAN: And the El Dorado Machine, well, it turns out it's an old Cessna with a new piece of equipment in it.
PRESTON: That's right. It has a huge box that they call the LiDAR machine which basically can pierce through the jungle's foliage and map whatsoever on the ground underneath.
CONAN: And this LiDAR machine can penetrate even triple canopy rainforest.
PRESTON: It's absolutely incredible. It strips it out completely. And you can actually see something as small as a meter on a side, sitting on the ground underneath this incredibly dense rainforest.
More:
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/06/181636289/how-technology-is-transforming-archaeology?ft=1&f=1007
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Older article, with photos:
Scientists 'discover' legendary lost White City of gold in dense Central American jungle thanks to advanced laser mapping
By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 12:16 EST, 9 June 2012 | UPDATED: 19:58 EST, 9 June 2012
A team of scientists using advanced laser mapping have detailed a remote region of Honduras that may have revealed the legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca, known as the 'White City' of gold.
Researchers from the University of Houston and the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) flew over the Mosquitia region in a small plane shooting billions of laser pulses at the ground to create a 3D digital map of the topology beneath the jungle canopy.
Compiling their data, the analysts revealed what appears to be man-made elevation changes that are thought to show a forgotten city plaza dotted with pyramids reclaimed by the jungle.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2156900/Legendary-lost-White-City-gold-discovered-dense-Central-American-jungle-advanced-laser-mapping.html#ixzz2SbdkwKcZ
