SPECIAL | PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident
Description
An ancient, lost city in Southern Mexico hidden under jungle canopy for centuries, spotted via just searching on Google. Luke Auld-Thomas’ research on Mayan settlements had him poking around on the internet which led him to a LIDAR survey - a laser-based technology used in this case for terrain mapping. When he ran the data, he realized there was an entire city, of a significant size, entirely covered in dense vegetation. What’s it like, finding a whole city, without ever setting foot on the ground? And could there be more of these ancient settlements, just a few clicks away, waiting to be found? Tulane doctoral student Luke Auld-Thomas joins The Excerpt to share how he stumbled into the discovery of a lifetime.
Episode Transcript available here
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