According to Reuters, a new study has uncovered nearly 1,000 ancient Mayan settlements, including 417 previously unknown cities, connected by what may be the world’s first “motorway network” and hidden for millennia in the dense jungles of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico.

It’s the latest discovery of the roughly 3,000-year-old Mayan centers and associated infrastructure, according to a statement Monday from the team at Guatemala’s FARES Anthropological Research Foundation, which oversaw the so-called LiDAR surveys.

The findings were first published last month in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.

All the recently discovered structures were built centuries before the emergence of the largest Maya city-states, which launched the great achievements of mankind in mathematics and writing.

LiDAR is short for “light detection and ranging” and the concept has been around since the 60s. In short, LiDAR technology allows you to scan and map the environment using laser beams and then calculate their return speed.

Originally used on military aircraft, LiDAR technology became famous as the system that helped the Apollo 15 mission image the surface of the Moon.

Among the details uncovered in the latest analysis is the first extensive system of stone “highways or superhighways” in the ancient world, the researchers said.

So far, spacious roads with a total length of about 177 km have been discovered, some of them have a width of about 40 meters and are raised above the ground by 5 meters.

In the Cuenca Karstica Mirador-Calakmul study, which stretches from the Petén Jungle in northern Guatemala to the southern state of Campeche in Mexico, researchers also discovered pyramids, playgrounds, and important hydraulic structures, including reservoirs, dams, and irrigation canals. .

“It shows the economic, political and social complexity of what was happening simultaneously in this area,” said lead researcher Richard Hansen.

The most recent finds date from the so-called Middle and Late Preclassic Maya, from about 1000-350 BC.

According to Reuters, this was more than five centuries before the classical heyday of civilization, when dozens of large urban centers flourished in modern Mexico and Central America.