An aerial laser scan of more than 800 square miles of Guatemalan jungle revealed Maya buildings, canals, roads and bridges. Christopher Intagliata reports.航空激光對(duì)超過800平方英里的危地馬拉叢林的掃描結(jié)果向我們展示了瑪雅建筑,運(yùn)河,道路和橋梁。克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔報(bào)道。
? 撰文\播音 克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔(Christopher Intagliata) 翻譯?Neo 審校?許楠
? If there's a fifth Indiana Jones movie, Indy might want to use one of the hottest new tools revolutionizing archaeology: LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, which allows archaeologists to survey ancient sites from the skies. 如果有第五部印第安納.·瓊斯出演的電影,他大概會(huì)想用一種熱門的新工具發(fā)起考古學(xué)新革命---LiDAR?,或稱為光學(xué)雷達(dá)。這種技術(shù)可以讓考古學(xué)家在空中研究古代遺址。 "Think of an impressionistic painting, the closer you look at the painting, the closer you look at the painting you see the brush strokes. When you pull away, suddenly it's obviously the face of a woman in a park. You know, your brain can interpolate that stuff better at a distance." “想象一幅印象派繪畫,越靠近畫作,就越能看清畫筆筆觸。而把畫面拉遠(yuǎn)時(shí),公園中女人的臉才會(huì)倏地躍然紙上。于是你就明白的大腦在遠(yuǎn)距離情況下可以更好地處理影像。” Marcello Canuto, an archaeologist at Tulane University.? 杜蘭大學(xué)的考古學(xué)家馬爾塞洛·卡努托如是說。 "LiDAR allows us to see these small little features that close up look like little pieces of data that we're not sure what to do with, but when you zoom out, there it is, clear as day." “近看這些小小的遺跡,就像一個(gè)一個(gè)的小塊數(shù)據(jù),我們無從下手,?但是LiDAR?讓我們把鏡頭拉遠(yuǎn),一切便昭然若揭。” The technology works like radar, but shoots laser pulses instead of radio waves, to 3-D map a landscape. In 2016 it was used to map over 800 square miles of Guatemalan jungle, including the area around the famous tourist site Tikal. Canuto remembers when he and his colleagues first saw the footage.? 這種技術(shù)與雷達(dá)相似,不過它發(fā)射的不是無線電波而是激光電波,從而對(duì)景觀進(jìn)行三維繪制。2016年,它被用于繪制800多平方英里的危地馬拉叢林地圖,包括著名的旅游景點(diǎn)蒂卡爾周圍的地區(qū)。?卡努托記得當(dāng)他和同事們第一次看到鏡頭時(shí)的場景。 "One hour went into two, went into three. We just lost track of time. It got dark outside, we were just open mouthed, we couldn't believe what we were seeing."? 一個(gè)小時(shí),兩個(gè)小時(shí),三個(gè)小時(shí)。我們忘記了時(shí)間。外面天黑了,我們張著嘴,對(duì)看到的感到難以置信。 What they discovered, after careful analysis, were buildings in areas they'd already excavated. And big landscape-level features, like canals and roads, bridges, ditches and walls. 經(jīng)過仔細(xì)分析,他們發(fā)現(xiàn)這是已經(jīng)發(fā)掘過的地區(qū)的建筑,以及一些大型景觀級(jí)別的遺跡,比如運(yùn)河,道路,橋梁,溝渠和墻壁。 "It was a very humbling moment for all of us. To be able to think, wow, that was under our feet the whole time and we didn't recognize it." Overall, the density of structures suggests a population of somewhere between seven and 11 million people in the region, more than 1000 years ago - which aligns with previous estimates.? Maps, photos and a catalog of what they found are in the journal?Science. [Marcello A. Canuto et al.,?Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala] “這真是激動(dòng)人心的時(shí)刻。我們?cè)谙?,哇哦,原來它一直在我們腳下,只是我們過去沒有認(rèn)識(shí)到它。”總之,遺跡結(jié)構(gòu)密度表明,在1000多年前,該區(qū)域的人口在700-1100萬人之間,這與之前估計(jì)的一致。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)的相關(guān)地圖,照片以及目錄信息發(fā)布在《科學(xué)》(Science)期刊上。 Nearly 100 years ago, the famous aviators Anne and Charles Lindbergh flew over some of the same swaths of jungle,?taking photographs from the sky, partly in hopes of aiding archaeologists. "It was very early appreciated that under the jungle canopy there was a lot to see. If we could only see through the jungle canopy." Now, we can. And it's a foundation, Canuto says, for an entirely new era in archaeology.? 大約100年前,著名的飛行員安妮和查爾斯·林德伯格飛越了同一片叢林并且從空中拍攝了照片,部分初衷是希望能對(duì)考古學(xué)家有所幫助?!叭藗兒茉缇鸵庾R(shí)到在叢林林冠下有很多東西值得探索——如果我們有能力透過叢林林冠進(jìn)行觀察的話”而現(xiàn)在,我們能夠做到了??ㄅ姓f,這將是開啟一個(gè)全新的考古學(xué)時(shí)代的起點(diǎn)。