The Key To Uncovering An Ancient Maya City? Lasers

Short Wave

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🗓️ 18 August 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Today we enter into the plot of a summer blockbuster adventure movie. Regina talks to NPR reporter Emily Olson about the recently uncovered ancient Maya city, Ocomtun. The large site, which researchers found using LiDAR technology, even seems to have "suburbs," flipping their expectations about how robust the Maya civilization was — and where it was.

Read Emily's full story here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.7	Hey Shortwaveers, Regina Barber here with Beloved Co-worker, new to Shortwave, Emily Olson.
0:10.9	Hey, Gina.
0:11.9	Hey, Emily.
0:12.9	So, you report on a wide range of topics for NPR, some scientific, some political.
0:18.1	What are you bringing us today?
0:19.9	That's right.
0:20.9	Yeah.
0:21.9	Today, I'm bringing you a story about something deep in time, the ancient Maya.
0:27.0	And I do mean Maya, which refers to the people and not Maya, which is talking about the
0:31.3	language.
0:32.3	The Maya are pretty cool, but honestly, I don't know much about them beyond they first
0:36.6	became a civilization thousands of years ago in Central America, and I probably come from
0:42.0	them.
0:43.0	I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
0:44.6	Some Maya populations are still around today.
0:47.2	But when we're talking about the ancient Maya, we're talking about a civilization that
0:51.3	thrived from roughly 250 BCE to 900 CE.
0:56.9	They dominated the Mesoamerican region, think like Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize,
1:02.3	Honduras, El Salvador.
1:04.4	But this story is about one particular slice of that region, the Central Yucatan Peninsula
1:09.8	in Mexico, the southern part of the state of Campeche.
	...

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