Space and aircraft-based remote sensing technologies may enable the discovery of lost ruins of ancient civilizations, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of New Hampshire in Durham and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US. By interpreting multispectral and visible images from satellites and synthetic aperture radar signals from an airborne laboratory, the scientists identified the effects on rain-forest vegetation caused by the limestone and lime used in the construction of Tikal, a Mayan city in what is now Guatemala that was inhabited from 900 B.C. to A.D. 900.
