As reported by a number of news outlets including the National Geographic, airborne laser scans have helped archeologists and researchers to uncover a vast Mayan ’megalopolis’ with tens of thousands of buildings including pyramids under the jungle in Guatemala.

As reported, the remains include canals and industrial-sized fields, and suggest that millions of people may have lived in the area.

The remains lay hidden for centuries, but were detected using airborne light detection and ranging technology, or LiDAR.  This exciting discovery which has been possible using technology has allowed researchers to use high-tech mapping of the site and these findings suggest that over then million people may have lived in a lost city in modern day Guatemala. This site was until the discovery unknown and now reveals communities and city where thousands of interconnected structures in Guatemala’s jungles, including houses, farms, highways, and pyramids were constructed.

According to the researchers, the find suggests that the area may have been home to more than 10 million people, and that at its peak 1,500 years ago, the Mayan civilization was more advanced than Chinese or Greek cultures.  In addition, it looks like that they had built huge defensive walls and fortresses which were uncovered in the area and also suggest a long history of war.  The archeologists believe that this finding is one of the greatest advances in over 150 years of Maya archaeology.

The new site includes urban centers with sidewalks, homes, terraces, ceremonial centers, irrigation canals and fortifications and researchers believe that if the technology was not utilized and they had simply used the classical archaeological method, they would not have finished and revealed all they have found in their lifetimes.  It is so amazing that for the Guatemala project, the LiDAR information was gathered over the course of eight days and 44 hours of flight and involved 38 billion laser pulses. The plane used to fly over the area was equipped with a state-of-the-art multispectral Titan MW LiDAR sensor, based on specifications requested by NCALM and developed by Teledyne Optech.  Airborne LiDAR is a remote sensing technology used to produce high resolution three-dimensional maps using lasers and it works by firing hundreds of thousands of laser pulses per second from an aircraft flying at a relatively low altitude; a timing device measures the round-trip travel time, using that information to create detailed topographical maps.

Archaeologists say they may have discovered one of the earliest examples of a ‘crayon’ — possibly used by our ancestors 10,000 years ago for applying colour to their animal skins or for artwork.

The ochre crayon was discovered near an ancient lake, now blanketed in peat, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire. An ochre pebble was found at another site on the opposite side of the lake.

The pebble had a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder. The crayon measures 22mm long and 7mm wide.

Ochre is an important mineral pigment used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers across the globe. The latest finds suggest people collected ochre and processed it in different ways during the Mesolithic period.

The ochre objects were studied as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments of Archaeology and Physics at the University of York, using state-of-the-art techniques to establish their composition.

The artifacts were found at Seamer Carr and Flixton School House. Both sites are situated in a landscape rich in prehistory, including one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, Star Carr.

More than 60 years after their discovery, Israeli experts have finally figured out the contents of one of the last two undeciphered fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Scientists at Haifa University reconstructed 60 tiny fragments that were part of six different scrolls.
What they discovered after they put it all together was a unique 364-day calendar used by a Jewish sect living during the Second Temple time.
“Most Jews used a calendar that is similar to the one used today,” Dr. Eshbal Ratzon of Haifa University told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “The sect used a calendar that is almost based on a solar year, comprising 364 days.”
Notes on the fragments show the sect even gave names to the days marking the four seasons. The days were referred to by the word “Tekufah” which in Hebrew means “period.”
“This term is familiar from the later Rabbinical literature and from mosaics dating to the Talmudic period, and we could have assumed that it would also be used with this meaning in the scrolls, but this is the first time it has been revealed,” remarked professor Jonatan Ben-Dov, who helped Ratzon decipher the ancient texts.
Some of the fragments were so tiny, measuring approximately 0.155 sq inches.
“This is the most important archaeological find ever made in Israel,” Ratzon said. “This is literature from the Second Temple period, and that’s rare.”
The scrolls, which date back almost 2,000 years, were part of 900 ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.
Ratzon and fellow scientist Ben-Dov, who teaches at the Bible Department at Haifa University, said they also discovered fascinating comments in the margins of the scrolls.
“What’s nice is that these comments were hints that helped me figure out the puzzle,” exclaimed Ratzon.
He believes the notes were made by a scribe as changes were being made to the ancient documents.
Razton added that the scribe’s annotations “showed me how to assemble the scroll”.
Ratson and Ben-Dov said they spent over a year reassembling the 60 fragments, most of which were written in Hebrew.
Now, only one more known scroll remains untranslated.

The number of global tourists increased 7 % in 2017, the biggest increase in seven years led by Europe with the lure of the Mediterranean’s sea and sun, the U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) announced Monday.

The sharp rise was mostly due to the economic recovery around the world, it added.

International tourist arrivals increased by a remarkable 7% in 2017 to reach a total of 1.32 billion, the source pointed out.

This strong momentum is forecast to continue in 2018 at a rate of 4% to 5%.

Led by Mediterranean destinations, Europe showed extraordinary results for such a large and rather mature region, with 8% more international arrivals than in 2016. Africa consolidated its 2016 rebound with an 8% increase. Asia and the Pacific recorded 6% growth, the Middle East 5% and the Americas 3%.

The year was characterized by sustained growth in many destinations and a firm recovery in those that suffered decreases in previous years, UNWTO said. Results were partly shaped by the global economic upswing and the robust outbound demand from many traditional and emerging source markets, particularly a rebound in tourism spending from Brazil and the Russian Federation after a few years of declines.

A team of scientists from the universities of Torino and Frieburg, headed by Greek paleontologist Giorgos Georgalis announced that crocodiles, cobras and giant Komodo-dragon-sized lizards called varanids once walked the banks of the Axios River and lived on the Greek island of Evia between nine and 18 million years ago, according to recent findings from the study of the fossil record, ANA reports.
The experts examined a number of fossilized crocodile teeth found in Aliveri in Evia by a team from Utrecht University and Georgalis, who published a paper on the fossils in “Historical Biology”, stressed that these are some of the oldest crocodile fossils ever found in Greece while The same area yielded fossils of chameleons that are unique in Greece, as well as snakes, lizards, turtles and frogs.
Georgios Georgalis is a researcher who studies fossil finds of reptiles particularly from the Aegean region (Greece and the western part of Turkey). He has a rather diverse topic since he does comparative analysis of recent and extinct specimens which belong to three large reptile groups: lizards, snakes and turtles. Before his stay at the Hungarian Natural History Museum within the Synthesys program, he also visited the Herpetological Collections of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and the Natural History Museum in Vienna to examine skeletons of extant snakes.
He has managed to discover a new species of turtle, which was named Nostimochelone lampra. This species was a so- called side-necked (Pleurodira) turtle. The peculiarity of the finding is that the side-necked turtles group is only inhabiting the Southern hemisphere today, and became extinct from the European continent a long time ago, however, the fossil of Nostimochelone lampra was found in an 18 million year old sediment in western Greece.
“There was a very warm climate in the area at that time, you see, with a very strong watery element, while it most likely resembled a jungle,” Georgalis said to ANA.
On the contrary, the area around the Axios River, resembled a savannah and was inhabited by cobras and giant lizards similar to the present-day Komodo dragon about nine million years ago.
Their fossils were discovered a few years back in Nea Mesimvria and were stored at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) geology department but were only recently identified. The findings were presented in a paper published by the “Swiss Journal of Geosciences” by Georgalis, Jean-Claude Rage from Paris University, Louis de Bonis (Poitier University) and Giorgos Kougos at AUTH.
“We identified approximately 10 fossils and recognised a small snake, a large lizard, a cobra and a varanid that then made up the reptile fauna of the region,” Georgalis told the ANA. He noted that these were the first fossils of lizards and snakes identified around the Axios River area, where scientists had so far identified mainly mammalian fossils, such as the ape Ouranopithecus macedoniensis, lions, hyenas and antilope.
Georgalis clarified that fossil reptiles in Greece have not been thoroughly studied, even though they are found in many places in the country and their study would help enhance understanding of the evolution of snakes and lizards in Europe, as well as the paleogeography and paleoclimate of the region.
He states that his most intresting discovery was a fossil of the 4 million year old giant viper, (Laophiscrotaloides) which was excavated near the city of Thessaloniki. This enormous creature was probably the biggest viper of all time. It had been discovered previously and for the first time by the world famous palaeontologist Richard Owen in the 19thcentury. His material unfortunately got lost and there was not any trace of this mysterious giant viper for a long time. The rediscovery of the new finding from the same locality proves that the giant viper really existed. The new vertebra provides valuable information about the taxonomic status and size of this bizarre, enigmatic snake.

As reported on Tornos News