Why ‘alas,’ you say?
Researchers found a vast network of ancient Maya cities that was home to millions more people than previously thought. https://t.co/V1dnDpsHwL
— National Geographic Magazine (@NatGeoMag) February 1, 2018
Hmm, let’s see. So, there are these hidden ruins out in the jungle that are far more elaborate than anybody thought, and we’re only now realizing this because of the use of a new super-tech device that allows us to pretty-much-magically see through the vegetation to see the cyclopean edifices underneath. Maybe millions of people lived there, but they don’t anymore. There’s evidence that looters have visited some of the sites, only nobody never told anybody later about them. National Geographic is doing a show based on all of this called “Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings,” and nobody stopped at that point and looked up every damn horror movie or novel that has been set in a tropical location.
Oh, and there’s this: “The survey is the first phase of the PACUNAM LiDAR Initiative, a three-year project that will eventually map more than 5,000 square miles (14,000 square kilometers) of Guatemala’s lowlands, part of a pre-Columbian settlement system that extended north to the Gulf of Mexico.” Eventually the PACUNAM Initiative — now there’s a name for a NGO that should strike fear in the heart of the genre-savvy — is gonna want to put boots on the ground to look at the mysteriously abandoned ruins of the Maya Snake Kings. Complete with mobile LiDAR devices prototype, no doubt.
So what could possibly go wron — hey, what’s that noise?
Moe Lane
Ah, the Maya.
Famed for their calendar, and for not being *quite* as evil as the Aztecs.
All they need to remember is that they will cover more ground if they split up.
They didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
With a line like “…the Maya Snake Kings”, I can’t believe I’m the first one to make an overt Cthulhu reference.
“Ia! Ia!….
You were the first one foolish enough to do so publicly. We are now all doomed. Well, more than we were already.
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.
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Ia!
I thought about it, and now I’m confused.
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Lidar? Really?
Microwaves, sure. Infrared, alright. Extreme ranges of ultraviolet? I could see that.
But visible (or near visible) light, projected from a laser? Why not just use ambient source for any wavelength than can penetrate heavy vegetation?
Also, why are we treating this as an emergent technology? This was a mature technology when I studied cartography in the early ’90s. (We used about 8″ wavelength for the purpose.) The hangup we had, was a lack of processing power to handle the results, but Moore’s Law put paid to that limitation last century.
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The story doesn’t make sense.
It reads like a bad Night at the Opera, and a few successful bluff checks.