NASA radar experiment discovers Mayan canals

Abstract

Extensive Mayan‐built irrigation canals, hidden for more than 1,000 years beneath dense rain forest in Guatemala, have been revealed by a new radar system developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The radar's unveiling of the ancient canal systems, dug by the Maya between 250 B.C. and 900 A.D. in Guatemala and the neighboring country of Belize, may answer a question that has long puzzled archeologists: How did the Maya, whose population numbered between 2 to 3 million citizens, feed their people?The canals were recently found in images taken during an early test (1977–1978) of the new radar from an aircraft over the cloud‐covered jungles of Guatemala and Belize—once the center of the Mayan empire. The new radar (called SAR for synthetic aperture radar) can penetrate clouds and provides higher resolution for comparable antenna than other radars. It has been developed by NASA and the military. JPL's version was originally designed to penetrate the dense cloud cover of Venus and provide maplike images of the planet's hidden surface.