Using LiDAR, filmmaker discovers “lost city”

Archaeologists on both sides of the tech divide are rolling their eyes.

Cinematographer Steve Elkins announced last week that by using LiDAR (light detection and ranging), he discovered "what appears to be evidence of archaeological ruins in an area long rumored to contain the legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca." The phrasing "lost city" is problematic, however: it's hard to lose a city when the city itself is a myth.

The mapping project, conducted over 40 hours split between seven flights during April and May, was led by Elkins' group, UTL Scientific. Participants include the thriller writer Douglas Preston, who is the former editor at the American Museum of Natural History. The project took place in conjunction with the government of Honduras with the help of technicians from the National Science Foundation's National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping and professors from the University of Houston.

The tech

The LiDAR survey covered the history-rich northeastern Mosquitia region of Honduras. They overflew the area, sending "25 to 50 laser pulses per square meter—a total of more than four billion laser shots" to the ground, according to the University of Houston, and capturing differences in elevation of as little as four inches. This process can look underneath forest canopies, producing a 3D map of areas in hours or days that an overland, machete-hacking expedition might take years to do.

The UTL survey employed an Optech Gemini Airborne Laser Scanner aboard a Cessna 337 Skymaster plane overflying 923 square kilometers at a height of 600 to 1,000 meters above the ground. According to UTL, 4 billion LiDAR "shots" were fired at a pulse rate of 125KHz.

Modern, high-intensity LiDAR is a recent innovation. The first archaeologists to use it to startling effect were Arlen and Diane Chase at Caracol in Belize, mapping more ground in four days, they said, than they had in their previous 25 years of exploration of the area.

Chris Fisher, as we detailed in a previous article, used it to extend the breadth and establish the importance of the Purepechan city of Sacapu Angamuco in western Mexico.

The problem

Now comes Ciudad Blanca, and the conflation of the ruins of the city the group found with a mythological city is ringing some alarm bells with a number of archaeologists.

Berkeley archaeologist Rosemary Joyce titled her post on the discovery "Good science, bad hype, bad archaeology." Making the rounds in the scientific community, Joyce's post takes the principals to task for not making archaeologists with a history in the area part of the team. The archaeologists, she claims, would never allow such implications to be released. However, Elkins denies that he has done so.

"I have never claimed to have discovered the legendary city of Ciudad Blanca," Elkins told Ars. "I have only stated that we found what appear to be significant archaeological ruins in an area that (according to legend) could be the location of the fabled site.... More often than not, legends have a kernel of truth in them. Perhaps one day someone will be able to say conclusively whether or not (or to what degree) there is any factual credence to the stories about Ciudad Blanca."

So perhaps all the blame for that trope lies with journalists. Certainly a lot of it does. However, it's hard to imagine that Mr. Elkins included mention of the mythic city in his press release with no idea that it would find a purchase in the public imagination. His above statement seems to indicate it has found some purchase in his.

Ground truthing

Although Professor Joyce makes a good case for the utility of her profession's exacting standards, she also comes close to dismissing the technology involved. "LiDAR can produce images of landscapes faster than people walking the same area, and with more detail. But that is not good archaeology, because all it produces is a discovery—not knowledge," she wrote. "If it’s a competition, then I will bet my money on people doing ground survey. And I will be betting less money: LiDAR is expensive. And I question the value you get for the money it costs."

Fisher and the Chases, who have used the technology, have made the case for LiDAR marking a "tipping point" in archaeology. They contend that it is far from just another technology, subordinate to the tyranny of pick and shovel. And if archaeologists can find more in four days of LiDAR flyovers than they could in 25 years on the ground, as Chase asserted, it is demonstrably cheaper.

Elkins said he hopes future steps in his organization's exploration will include "ground truthing" the LiDAR data, as per Joyce's admonition.

"We are hoping to organize a multi-disciplinary scientific ground exploration of some of the areas we have surveyed in cooperation with the Honduran government. Archaeologists will be an integral part of the team and it will be up to them to decide what it is the LiDAR imagery revealed."

Technology is making it possible for those with a passionate interest in history—but no grounding in the rigors of archaeology as a discipline—to make huge-scale discoveries. But those folks can also allow their imaginations to take the lead. Elkins and the Ciudad Blanca situation are reminiscent of the filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici ("The Naked Archaeologist"), who regularly announcesdiscoveries made and mysteries solved, despite the disagreement of many, if not most, in the scientific community.

So it might also be accurate to say that, just as the technology can overwhelm those without the necessary knowledge to evaluate it, it can also allow non-specialists to push past the threshold of reliability.

41 Reader Comments

Simcha Jacobovici adds information, perspectives and speculative connections to the larger body of knowledge, and appreciably so. I never took any of his potential conclusions as "case closed", and I don't think he does either. People who get other people interested in science often do so at the (apparently) necessary expense of their own credibility, which nearly always gets called into question by those who are jealous of their achievements, at least in the area of notoriety.Haters gonna hate.

Considering that many, if not most, of the major archeological discoveries have been made by amateurs, I don't see the difference here, except that these amateurs aren't digging up their discoveries in an unprofessional manner, and stealing any artifacts they find. The real work of digging will be done by professionals.

I don't see what better way this could be done. Film makers have the money to do the finding of the sites, and then, without wasting time looking for them, the Pro's can spend their time, and precious funding working on something they know is there.

Professor Joyce sounds a bit hostile to a technology that could render a lot of backbreaking work moot, or at least significantly less needle in a haystack. Although there probably is that real fear of something similar to a tourist with a metal detector finding El Dorado. Still, it would be amazing to be able to fly over large portions of the Middle East to see what might be under a lot of sand.

Oh, and Mosquitia sounds like a lovely place to spend some time and lose a couple gallons of blood to flying insects.

Generally speaking, I find archaeologists to be highly resistant to change, especially when that change involves new technology. In fact, they're generally resistant to technology in general and infinitely more so when said tech might challenge long-held beliefs.

For some reason, and I'm not sure why, but archaeologists generally don't seem to possess the ability for critical thinking. A classic example would be the Great Pyramid. Most of them still insist it was built in 20 years despite all current technology (and small-scale attempts to prove their theory correct) indicating that that number is simply impossible -- even today.

Like Replicant, I'm not surprised an established archeologist is against this.

Archeologists are far more likely to be empire-building territorial bureaucrats than any other group I've met, including business and polisci majors.

If suddenly you can whip over a carefully-developed area and determine that there are no ruins, or there is some sort of ruin, then the Great Archeologists have no place; they'll be replaced digging specialists and librarians.

Great news and good work!As to the "professional" nay-sayers, this is similar to what Sarah Parcak went through when she claim discovery of additional Egyptian pyramids using infrared satellite views. Once she received permission and confirmed her findings opinion swung 180. I suspect we will see the same here.Wonder when they dig?

I agree with the article's counterpoint to Elkins's bluster. What's that? You didn't mean to imply that you'd found a mythical city, just casually mentioned you might have when talking to news media that are well-known for blowing any historical or scientific discovery massively out of proportion (see: every time cancer "might be cured" with "revolutionary new technique/drug")?

You don't say.

I think people want to instantly dismiss that "crotchety, old archaeologist" and her clinging to old techniques, but while she is probably too dismissive of LiDAR as a tool, focusing on that risks missing her main thrust. There's a reason archaeologists go to school for so long, and it's not to learn how to use a shovel. It's because the meat of archaeology is in the careful interpretation of data, not the collection, and that's what was colossally bungled here.

It's far more than "jealousy" to point that out. I think anyone here would be pretty frustrated if someone barely qualified swaggered into our area of expertise claiming to have done the impossible in the field with almost no proof to back it up whatsoever. It's true, major paradigm shifts in both science and the social sciences have come as a result of an outsider considered crazy. Let's not let that overshadow the fact that these are fact-based enterprises. Those that changed paradigms did so because they were provably right. Meanwhile, the vast majority of outsiders considered crazy were, actually, both crazy and wrong. I'm going to give my benefit of the doubt to the people who've studied this their entire professional lives over rich amateurs seeking a glamorous, flashy, headline-grabbing return on their investment.

In contrast to Jacobovici's made-for-tv idiocies, though, Elkins could very well have discovered a previously unknown city site that will, with further research by qualified professionals, prove a wealth of knowledge about the past of Honduras. What he didn't do is discover a city that did not exist (beliefs of gold-crazed conquistadors aside). Linking his research to a myth, with no evidence other than the fact that features resembling a city exist, is nothing more than a ridiculous publicity stunt. You take the good with the bad, I suppose. I'd rather this than the most plausible alternative, that he not advance LiDAR science and not find anything.

Great news and good work!As to the "professional" nay-sayers, this is similar to what Sarah Parcak went through when she claim discovery of additional Egyptian pyramids using infrared satellite views. Once she received permission and confirmed her findings opinion swung 180. I suspect we will see the same here.

It's not /quite/ the same though; Joyce isn't arguing the presence of an archeological site in the area, and in fact agrees it is clear one exists.

Her point, as summarized in her own words is that "archaeology as a science is not about discoveries, it is about knowledge" and that simply identifying the site isn't the same thing as /understanding/ it.

Which is fine, and fair. But I don't see how it should be read as deminishing the discovery in any way.

".... More often than not, legends have a kernel of truth in them." Yeah, in fictional stories if there is a "legend," it always comes up in the story. This is real life, however, and you are a tool.

Actually, his statement is correct. For many years scholars thought Troy was nothing but a myth, and yet they found it. But just because they city really existed, doesn't mean that the rest of the story is true. Most of Homer's story is just that; a story. I'm not saying this La Ciudad Blanca, but just the city is fabled doesn't mean that it never existed. It just means that most of what we know about this city is probably false.

Volt-aire, you are right that Elkins dropping the name Ciudad Blanca was nothing more than a publicity stunt, but you are forgetting one thing. Archeological diggs require money. What's going to attract investors better; I found a random city in the jungle, or I might have found La Ciudad Blanca. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure the second one is going to work better

Generally speaking, I find archaeologists to be highly resistant to change, especially when that change involves new technology. In fact, they're generally resistant to technology in general and infinitely more so when said tech might challenge long-held beliefs.

Your blanket statements are at odds with my experience as an archaeologist. Every archaeologist (worth his or her salt) relies on a range of technologies to get the job done.

For example, when I began my career back in the mid-'80s, archaeologists were already using a combination of GIS, GPS, satellite imaging, side-looking radar, and aerial photography to create maps of archaeological site potential. On the ground, we regularly performed surveys using magnetometers and ground penetrating radar to locate subsurface anomalies. Almost all of our on-site mapping and route-finding were done with the help of GPS (albeit the huge backpack units). At that time, we were also switching over to accelerator mass spectrometry because it was more accurate and used smaller samples than standard carbon dating.

At present, the use of LIDAR and synthetic aperture radar is in vogue, but hardly a new thing. You might be surprised to know that we had experimented with LIDAR more than ten years ago and is now just another tool in the toolbox. Nowadays, archaeologists will adopt a new technology as soon as it can be shown to be of benefit to their operations. Of course, sometimes this backfires as in the example of my company latching onto Iridium (the sat phone company) when they first started up. We got some hardware, but the service never worked and the company went bankrupt in the same year.

Anyway, I can only assume that you've developed your notions about archaeologists from what you've read or seen on TV. The number of times that you wrote "generally" or "in general" seems to point to a lack of insight into what archaeologists do. Well, I can assure you that we've long since divested ourselves of the arcane methods and beliefs of Howard Carter and Giovanni Belzoni.

[S]Replicant"For some reason, and I'm not sure why, but archaeologists generally don't seem to possess the ability for critical thinking. <snip>.[/quote]

Not sure where you came up with this one. I'm alternating between perplexed and insulted here.

[quote="OSB wrote:

Her point, as summarized in her own words is that "archaeology as a science is not about discoveries, it is about knowledge" and that simply identifying the site isn't the same thing as /understanding/ it.

Which is fine, and fair. But I don't see how it should be read as deminishing the discovery in any way.

Doctor Joyce voices what most archaeologists are thinking. While the LIDAR data is cause for excitement, the linking of the data to Ciudad Blanco is premature and, I daresay, reckless and irresponsible. This highlights the difference between archaeologists and pothunters.

Great news and good work!As to the "professional" nay-sayers, this is similar to what Sarah Parcak went through when she claim discovery of additional Egyptian pyramids using infrared satellite views. Once she received permission and confirmed her findings opinion swung 180. I suspect we will see the same here.

It's not /quite/ the same though; Joyce isn't arguing the presence of an archeological site in the area, and in fact agrees it is clear one exists.

Her point, as summarized in her own words is that "archaeology as a science is not about discoveries, it is about knowledge" and that simply identifying the site isn't the same thing as /understanding/ it.

Which is fine, and fair. But I don't see how it should be read as deminishing the discovery in any way.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Until they get feet on the ground to figure out exactly what was found by LiDAR any talk of what it might be is nothing more than fantasy and hype. It might be a great way to get funding but its a poor way for science.

P.S. Why was Douglas Preston even on or part of such an expedition? Working on a new book? Maybe a movie with Pendergast?

"So it might also be accurate to say that, just as the technology can overwhelm those without the necessary knowledge to evaluate it, it can also allow non-specialists to push past the threshold of reliability."

The overall tone of this ars article is "Science should be left to the experts" an attitude I absolutely hate and at least to me is sort of "Anti Ars".

Like aerial photography lidar gives you a lot of information about what is on and possibly in the ground below you. It gives you shapes of hidden structures better than a photo as it can get past a lot of the natural cover. it cant and never will tell you what it there. Just like aerial and geophysical survey lidar is just another tool. It will allow targeting ground survey but it wont and cant remover the need for ground survey.

At best it will tell you their seems to be a man made structure below you, it cant tell you if it really is man made or just a freaky natural occurrence (common sense helps there) It cant tell you the dates of build, the state of the site, who made it, why it was abandoned / destroyed or really anything about the site. It is just an enabler for further study it doesn't reduce the need for ground work other than reducing initial survey area.

"may have found" suddenly turns into "found and spreading lies" + technology is too expensive, just use the shovel, that is the "real" tool. Why does this remind me of MAFIIA? Same attitudes in a completely unrelated field.

Considering that many, if not most, of the major archeological discoveries have been made by amateurs, I don't see the difference here, except that these amateurs aren't digging up their discoveries in an unprofessional manner, and stealing any artifacts they find. The real work of digging will be done by professionals.

I don't see what better way this could be done. Film makers have the money to do the finding of the sites, and then, without wasting time looking for them, the Pro's can spend their time, and precious funding working on something they know is there.

Precisely. The guy has found something and is inviting professionals to go and professionally examine it. What is there to get uppity about here ?

"So it might also be accurate to say that, just as the technology can overwhelm those without the necessary knowledge to evaluate it, it can also allow non-specialists to push past the threshold of reliability."

The overall tone of this ars article is "Science should be left to the experts" an attitude I absolutely hate and at least to me is sort of "Anti Ars".

You should read the observatory forum sometime to see the sheer amount of BS and misconception(s) spewed around by such non-professionals, then the hostility when actual scientific professionals attempt to correct them.

Nah, it's fine to keep amateurs away from important scientific advances. Schliemann, for example, destroyed several ancient Mycenaean artefacts during some initial bumbling about in the ruins of "Troy".

".... More often than not, legends have a kernel of truth in them." Yeah, in fictional stories if there is a "legend," it always comes up in the story. This is real life, however, and you are a tool.

Actually, his statement is correct. For many years scholars thought Troy was nothing but a myth, and yet they found it. But just because they city really existed, doesn't mean that the rest of the story is true. Most of Homer's story is just that; a story. I'm not saying this La Ciudad Blanca, but just the city is fabled doesn't mean that it never existed. It just means that most of what we know about this city is probably false.

Although your story about the discovery of Troy is correct (from what I've heard--just a layman here), it doesn't actually prove Elkins' statement--it is just a data point. I don't know if it's actually possible to prove or disprove that a majority of legends (defined how?) have a kernel of truth (how much is a "kernel"?). Which makes it the perfect soundbite: it has the ring of truth and can be made to mean different things if you need it to. Unfortunately those characteristics also mean it doesn't add much of value to the storehouse of human knowledge. Speaking of which...

jcool wrote:

Quote:

But that is not good archaeology, because all it produces is a discovery—not knowledge,"

I love this quote. As if discovery has no value. I'm pretty sure that in order to investigate a site, you have to, I don't know, DISCOVER IT.

No doubt Professor Joyce is already aware of this, because I don't see her saying discovery has no value. She's arguing something else, which is that mere discovery != good archeology. As an analogy, consider the story of the three blind men: one says "I discovered a snake!"; the second says "I discovered a tree trunk!"; the third says "I discovered a brush!". Those are all discoveries of some value, but the "good archeology" analogue here would be the expert who studies the phenomena and says "There is probably an elephant here".

Considering that many, if not most, of the major archeological discoveries have been made by amateurs, I don't see the difference here, except that these amateurs aren't digging up their discoveries in an unprofessional manner, and stealing any artifacts they find. The real work of digging will be done by professionals.

I don't see what better way this could be done. Film makers have the money to do the finding of the sites, and then, without wasting time looking for them, the Pro's can spend their time, and precious funding working on something they know is there.

Precisely. The guy has found something and is inviting professionals to go and professionally examine it. What is there to get uppity about here ?

The fact that the finder put two entirely unrelated things together and calls it archaeology: 1. stories of a mythical city and its equally mythical location and 2. the finding of a site with ruins.

Finding ruins != archaeology. That's professor Joyce's argument. She's not saying that ruins weren't found. She's saying that until someone's been on the ground looking at what's there, there's no way of telling what it is, let alone interpreting what it might have been.

Of course, if my archaeologist girlfriend's colleagues are anything to go by, coming up with hairbrained ideas and theories based on simple finds isn't something only amateurs do. One of them had a whole story about how a skeleton's placement and damage to the skull indicated this girl had been executed and probably raped by Romans and actually had that published in an interview with a paper. The problem was, at the time he gave that interview, just as likely an explanation could have been that a farmer had hit the skull with a shovel hundreds of years later. He simply couldn't tell where the damage in the skull came from simply by looking at it.

Considering that many, if not most, of the major archeological discoveries have been made by amateurs, I don't see the difference here, except that these amateurs aren't digging up their discoveries in an unprofessional manner, and stealing any artifacts they find. The real work of digging will be done by professionals.

I don't see what better way this could be done. Film makers have the money to do the finding of the sites, and then, without wasting time looking for them, the Pro's can spend their time, and precious funding working on something they know is there.

Precisely. The guy has found something and is inviting professionals to go and professionally examine it. What is there to get uppity about here ?

The fact that the finder put two entirely unrelated things together and calls it archaeology: 1. stories of a mythical city and its equally mythical location and 2. the finding of a site with ruins.

Finding ruins != archaeology. That's professor Joyce's argument. She's not saying that ruins weren't found. She's saying that until someone's been on the ground looking at what's there, there's no way of telling what it is, let alone interpreting what it might have been.

Of course, if my archaeologist girlfriend's colleagues are anything to go by, coming up with hairbrained ideas and theories based on simple finds isn't something only amateurs do. One of them had a whole story about how a skeleton's placement and damage to the skull indicated this girl had been executed and probably raped by Romans and actually had that published in an interview with a paper. The problem was, at the time he gave that interview, just as likely an explanation could have been that a farmer had hit the skull with a shovel hundreds of years later. He simply couldn't tell where the damage in the skull came from simply by looking at it.

This is my whole issue with hard science: cultural and social incompetence.

YES, defend against rubbish statements in scholarly journals.NO, no one cares if this is really the mythical city of somesuchxtlian. Shut up. He didn't even write a paper in a rubbish journal to make some absurd claim.

The folks defending her are overreacting as badly as she is. This isn't climate skepticism in the service of billionaire oil executives. This is just regular hype about a discovery, don't whine about 'real archaeology' like you're a high priest or something. That's not science either!

I agree with the article's counterpoint to Elkins's bluster. What's that? You didn't mean to imply that you'd found a mythical city, just casually mentioned you might have when talking to news media that are well-known for blowing any historical or scientific discovery massively out of proportion (see: every time cancer "might be cured" with "revolutionary new technique/drug")?

You don't say.

I think people want to instantly dismiss that "crotchety, old archaeologist" and her clinging to old techniques, but while she is probably too dismissive of LiDAR as a tool, focusing on that risks missing her main thrust. There's a reason archaeologists go to school for so long, and it's not to learn how to use a shovel. It's because the meat of archaeology is in the careful interpretation of data, not the collection, and that's what was colossally bungled here.

It's far more than "jealousy" to point that out. I think anyone here would be pretty frustrated if someone barely qualified swaggered into our area of expertise claiming to have done the impossible in the field with almost no proof to back it up whatsoever. It's true, major paradigm shifts in both science and the social sciences have come as a result of an outsider considered crazy. Let's not let that overshadow the fact that these are fact-based enterprises. Those that changed paradigms did so because they were provably right. Meanwhile, the vast majority of outsiders considered crazy were, actually, both crazy and wrong. I'm going to give my benefit of the doubt to the people who've studied this their entire professional lives over rich amateurs seeking a glamorous, flashy, headline-grabbing return on their investment.

In contrast to Jacobovici's made-for-tv idiocies, though, Elkins could very well have discovered a previously unknown city site that will, with further research by qualified professionals, prove a wealth of knowledge about the past of Honduras. What he didn't do is discover a city that did not exist (beliefs of gold-crazed conquistadors aside). Linking his research to a myth, with no evidence other than the fact that features resembling a city exist, is nothing more than a ridiculous publicity stunt. You take the good with the bad, I suppose. I'd rather this than the most plausible alternative, that he not advance LiDAR science and not find anything.

We seem to have read different articles. He made ONE claim from what I ready. He found something that looks like ruins in an area that supposedly contains a mythical city. Sure, bringing up the mythical city is bad form, but archaeologists should be drooling at this, not bitching at him. The ability to track down sites worth checking out in a matter of days instead of years? Wow. I noticed a distinct lack of this guy offering conclusions or any such thing. He just said "Oh look. There's stuff there! How awesome!".

Next up...the dude makes films. Why are we trying to hold him to some sort of exacting standard? Again, he offers no conclusions. He's a dude with a fancy camera saying telling us what his fancy camera got a picture of. And that whole "It's about knowledge, not discovery" statement is a joke. I'm hoping there's much more going here than the article says. You can't get knowledge from a site you haven't discovered. Archeaology is about both, otherwise it's nothing more than mental masturbation. Discovery is the HARD part. Once you discover a site, there are enough professionals around that the job can and will get done to standard, assuming someone is able to set up an excavation. You need a place to go before you can do that though.

Archaeologists have been using remote sensing technologies for years. Portraying them as anti-innovation Luddites is erroneous. Keep in mind, that remote sensing techniques such as ground-penetrating radar, resistivity, LIDAR, etc. produce anomolies. These anomolies must be ground checked to verify that they are indeed archaeological in nature and not the result of some other physical process.

For some reason, and I'm not sure why, but archaeologists generally don't seem to possess the ability for critical thinking. A classic example would be the Great Pyramid. Most of them still insist it was built in 20 years despite all current technology (and small-scale attempts to prove their theory correct) indicating that that number is simply impossible -- even today.

While there are still lots of questions about how the Great Pyramid was built, the science is pretty sound that the project could have been completed in 20 years (or even less). We know how many blocks there were, how many people it takes to move one of those blocks around and how fast they can be moved. We know how the blocks might have been quarried and how far they had to be moved. The exact mix of ramps, hoists and levers is still a subject of great debate, but the approximate amount of time if might have taken is not.

All it would have required would be to throw a lot of man-hours at the project. There's a lot of available man-hours in an agrarian country of a million-or-so people where the fields are completely flooded for four months out of the year.

"may have found" suddenly turns into "found and spreading lies" + technology is too expensive, just use the shovel, that is the "real" tool. Why does this remind me of MAFIIA? Same attitudes in a completely unrelated field.

The problem with archaology is that you can spend years literally with your face in the dirt micro-digging out small segments of the matrix. This can do 2 things to a person..

1) make them lose sight of the big picture2) make them think that unless someone else has "put in their dues" as they have, then they're not worth listening to

There are plenty of cases where a kid has found a "rock" in their back-yard which turned out to be a bone, and set some archaeologists to work in a fascinating dig. But, there is a lot of "good old boys" mentality in the industry. Took a class on archaology in college, and the professor spent more time talking about the politics of it than the actual science behind it. Her frustrations stemmed from a lot of old-school methods still used, but only by certain folks. What she loved about it was how some regular joe could be out there and stumble across something. Then, tell the arch's, and they'd go dig it up and work with the anthropologists to figure out what it was and where it fit into the scheme of things.

But, I do sort of agree with the lady. You get some folks flying around LiDAR'ing the place for ruins, but they didn't get the local arch's involved first? It can get someone PO'ed when they feel like they're not being asked for a "mother may I" or something. But, arch's have this huge indoctrination of seniority ... if you try to talk to some of them and get some feedback, they can have their nose so high in the air you'd be lucky to get them to give you the time of day. So ... overall, who gives a crap. These folks found some place. They're speculating on it. The arch's can go dig it up and see what it is. Get on with life. Instead, they want to make a big stink over the speculations and the "rudeness" of going behind the arch's backs.

I honestly expected better from the Ars community. We all should know that technology and science are NOT the same thing.

Archaeologists are scientists first, which means they dont just put on their Indiana Jones costume and go digging in the dirt. They come up with a list of QUESTIONS about the culture in a particular time and place. They HYPOTHESIZE an answer to their question. They determine what evidence they would need to find to DISPROVE their hypothesis. They then determine how best to find that evidence. They spend years working on sites even when they know exactly where to look.

Hugh Thomson talks about the difference between explorers and archaeologists in his book The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland. He was a film maker, journalist and explorer, and he went in search of the legendary White Rock, an Incan royal city mentioned, but never well documented by the conquistadors. Explorers find things, so that others, like archaeologists, can study them. He actually found the lost city, exploring on foot, reading old texts, following old trails and talking to local informants.

This sounds like another example of exploration and discovery. There were stories of a city, with only vague clues as to its location. Another film maker and explorer gets involved, this time using LIDAR, which is a great way to find interesting archaeological sites. (Look at the recent rediscovery of that ancient Roman city near Venice.) Sure, there's a good chance this site is another city as opposed to the one in the legend, but we'd never know unless someone first discovered it and someone then studied it.

Curt Hopkins / Curt writes for Ars Technica about the intersection of culture and technology, including the democratization of information, spaceships, robots, the theatre, archaeology, achives and free speech.