Rant: That "lost city" in the jungle everyone's hyped about is probably just a hill with some trees

Last week I saw another article about that LiDAR scan finding a "lost city" in Honduras. I've been doing survey work in Central America for 3 years now and I swear half these things are just natural formations with a few old potsherds scattered around. Back in 2021 I worked a site near Tikal where a team claimed they found a pyramid complex underground - turned out to be termite mounds after a dig. Has anyone else gotten burned by these overhyped discoveries that fall apart when you actually walk the grid?

2 comments

2 Comments

blair_dixon2d ago

Those LiDAR scans are basically archeology's version of seeing shapes in clouds. Then you fly a drone in and find out it's just a weirdly shaped anthill with some moss on it. Remember the "hidden Mayan megacity" that turned out to be a cornfield with a GPS glitch? Good times.

evand652d ago

Has anyone actually crunched the numbers on how many LiDAR "discoveries" actually pan out versus how many are just software artifacts? I've read that in some dense jungle environments, the return signal can bounce off multiple canopy layers before hitting the ground, so you're essentially looking at a fuzzy composite of trees and terrain. Seems like half the hype is driven by universities needing press releases to justify the grant money, which makes you wonder how many of those "lost cities" are just the software's best guess at filling in blank spots.