Using radar (LiDAR), the scientists discovered a network of about 800 Maya settlements and a vast network of interconnected “highways.” These ancient roads consist of dirt roads. All of them (with hundreds of cities, towns and villages connecting them) testify to the high level of organization of pre-classical civilization.

What scientists have learned

This is the world’s first highway system we have,
— says the study’s lead author, Richard Hansen, a professor of anthropology at the University of Idaho.

known as sakby, meaning “white paths”These roads rose above mixed and sometimes swampy forest massifs. In their heyday, sakbas were covered with a layer of clay mortar and a white plaster that carefully helped the quarry mix appear more visible in the moonlight.

Marcello Canuto, a professor of anthropology at Tulane University named in the study, said building the sachet was “an effort that required a lot of people, a lot of effort and coordination.” It also requires a certain hierarchy. A developed infrastructure requires a uniform “power to organize thousands of workers,” ranging from “lime makers, mortar and quarry specialists, lithological technicians, architects, logistics and agricultural supply specialists to law enforcement and religious leaders.”

The discovery shows just how extensive this web of extinct civilizations, still largely overlooked, could be.