Invisible Inca Structures Discovered At Machu Picchu

earth-chronicles.com...

I love it when they find new old stuff. LIDAR is really advancing what we know, even if a lot of it won't be seen for years. Clearing out overgrown jungle isn't that easy.

According to Nauka w Polsce, a laser scanner was installed on board the unmanned aerial vehicle. With his help, archaeologists have explored a large area covered with jungle. It is the dense vegetation that makes classical studies difficult. The research project started several years ago. Its purpose is to study the Chachabamba Inca ceremonial complex located in the Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park.

It is assumed that this complex was built at the beginning of the 15th century, but until recently it was not possible to confirm this. The fact is that most of the territory is covered with tropical forest. The researchers were helped to solve the problem by a laser scanning device, the so-called LiDAR. In the images obtained with this device, vegetation is not displayed, but those structures that are hidden under it are visible.

“As a result of our research, we were able to find a number of unknown structures in this park,” says Dominika Seckovskaya of the Andean Research Center at the University of Warsaw. According to her, the analysis of the photographs helped to establish that the central part of the ceremonial complex was a huge rock with altars, steps and a groove carved into it.

The latter, according to the assumptions of archaeologists, was used for some kind of liquid. It is possible that ritual drinks flowed down it, but it is possible that it could be the blood of sacrificial animals. There was a small square in front of the rock, along the edges of which several buildings were erected. Also, the square was surrounded by small ritual baths. In total, there were about one and a half dozen of them, they were used for ritual ablutions. Water was supplied to them using a fairly well thought-out system.

I always like hearing about these new discoveries through the use of lidar and other scanning techniques. Its helps a ton in areas such as the one the OP mentioned as it would take an enormous amount of digging and cutting down forest to even get to ten percent of the area that is mapped with this tech.

I can only imagine what has been seen that has been suppressed by government and media, I'm sure many amazing things that should be shared with the world and added to our collective consciousness to educate ourselves and others.

I bet there are some amazing treasures and ancient technology and cool.rock.carvings and paintings that tell us a whole different story about these civilizations and possibly where they went...... S+F OP!

I hope they can find skelatons of the people of that time.

Simply amazing! Like many little boys, I often scampered alone through local forests pretending to be an intrepid explorer hacking through steamy jungles in search of long-forgotten civilizations. It was fascinating then and remains so still today.

There is a certain bitter-sweet excitement to the recent discoveries made by modern sensors. On the one hand, technology such as Lidar heightens, for me, the wonder of this subject. The thought of a massive ancient metropolis sprawling unseen beneath inscrutable jungle reignites a childlike sense of awe. I enjoy thinking of the many overflights conducted since aviation's dawn for whatever purpose. I envision the planes soaring by at high altitude heedless to the green, featureless expanse passing far below. All the while completely oblivious that the jungle hid vast, abandoned civilizations of such collosal scale that, were they exposed, they would be visible even to aircraft miles above.

However, I can't help but feel a bit sad for the many early explorers that tackled that same canopy and failed to discover anything significant. And yet, how many seemingly fruitless trails were hacked right through a city that rivalled those of Europe. How many camps were pitched in the midst of ancient urban sprawl, dense housing developments crumbling mere yards away, perfectly camouflaged by layers of vegetation.

Or, of darker note, imagine how many explorers were viewed as fools for a belief in grand ancient cities comparable to those of modern Europe or America, their quest deemed Quixotic. And, of these, how many were swallowed by these jungles forever, perishing within overgrown courtyards or along invisible roadways. Their bodies disintegrating over time, joining in death the ancient remains they had so urgently - and fruitlessly - sought in life.

I've read about this complex. The article contained information about 14 baths (probably for ritual ablutions) and about the network of grooves that served to fill these baths and started from the Urubamba River.
www.nbcnews.com...