Robert sent in a couple of links. At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/lasers-reveal-maya-city-including-thousands-of-structures-hidden-in-mexico … a US archaeologist, using LiDAR maps of forestry scientists, discovered what looks like a mega-city – picking out 6674 separate structures. A lot of these will be walls and evidence of terrace agriculture – but on the ground excavations will be required to follow up the findings. The surprising thing that caught my eye was that the survey found imprints of activity tucked between modern farms and highways, as well as in the forested regions. Provisionally, the life time of the city has been placed between AD250 and 900. At that time the site was abandoned and presumably the population moved elsewhere. Possibly because of a shift in the InterTropical Convergence Zone, a sort of tropical jet stream.
The same story is at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/10/241029121056.htm … where the headline reads, have we found all the major Maya cities? New research suggests otherwise. From this we learn that it was not just a single city the LiDAR imaging had shown but many other Maya settlements. The research was published in the journal Antiquity – and it seems the 6500 structures refers to a region over 50 square miles, rather than just the new city complex.
At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/lasers-reveal-secrets-of-lost-silk-road-cities-in-the-mountains-of-uzbekistan … settlements along the Silk Road are usually found in the lowland zone, where travel along the trade routes was less demanding. However, LiDAR has revealed that some settlements were in the Pamir Mountains of central Asia. Two bustling medieval cities have come to light – but what link did they have with the Silk Road? They were situated 7000 miles above sea level – so something must have been attractive to the merchants and traders. The mountains were usually the habitat of nomadic pastoralists. The key appears to be that the Pamir Mountains are rich in iron ore – a major commodity in the early medieval period. The mountains also possessed dense stands of juniper forest – ideal for smelting the ore.