Emily Chan
For centuries, legends have circulated about lost cities that existed deep within the wilderness of the Amazon rainforest.
Recently, researchers have discovered traces of those cities with the help of laser scanning technology.
The 2,500-year-old settlement was complete with a complex network of pre-Hispanic structures, roads, and farmlands. It is the oldest and largest agricultural civilization to be found in the region.
The ancient settlement is located in Ecuador’s Upano Valley along a stretch of the eastern Andes mountains.
Archaeologists have studied the region for over two decades, but it wasn’t until they employed lidar that the civilization was revealed.
Lidar stands for light detection and ranging; it is a remote sensing technology that uses thousands of infrared laser pulses to survey a landscape.
The lasers are able to detect what is concealed beneath the dense canopy of the rainforest and create more accurate maps.
Lidar has been a vital tool for the field of archaeology. It has even helped uncover pre-Hispanic settlements in other parts of the forest.
“I have explored the site many times, but lidar gave me another view of the land,” said Stéphen Rostain, the lead archaeologist of the study and director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). “On foot, you have trees in the way, and it’s difficult to see what’s actually hidden there.”
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