Laser archaeology uncovers ancient city lost for over 1000 years

Archaeology has long been a science that uses very basic tools to unearth and examine ancient artifacts, but in recent years it has taken a substantial leap into the 21st century, using lasers to find an ancient city in Honduras, and now an even older lost city in the jungles of Cambodia.

Using a system called Lidar — Light Detection And Ranging — which is similar to radar, but uses laser pulses instead of radio waves, a team from the University of Sydney's archaeological research centre in Cambodia have located the ancient city of Mahendraparvata.

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Mounted on a plane, the lidar made sweeps of the jungle below, and the data that was gathered was used to create a detailed terrain map of the area. Like the work done in Honduras showed, as the laser scans swept over the jungle, the light beams were able to penetrate through the jungle canopy, effectively allowing the researchers to 'remove' the canopy and see a detailed view of the jungle floor.

"With this instrument – bang – all of a sudden we saw an immediate picture of an entire city that no one knew existed, which is just remarkable," said Damian Evans, director of the research centre, in an interview.

Downloading the lidar data into hand-held GPS units, the archaeological team trekked into the landmine-littered jungle, and were able to personally verify what the lidar images had seen — the structures, temples, roads and canals of a once-thriving city.

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With discoveries like this, it shows how the combination of more 'traditional' science with cutting-edge technologies can yield some amazing results. What other lost bits of human history might we soon uncover with these techniques, and what other sciences could benefit from it as well?

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