Tag: Tikal

Scots Plan Scan of Mount Rushmore and Skara Brae

A pioneering Scots team could be the answers to saving some of the world’s greatest historical monuments. The six-strong group from Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art are making waves across the world, as they use cutting-edge laser technology to map world heritage sites across the globe. First up on the team’s list will be Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota, USA. And the group are confident they can use their American-made CyArk 500 scanner to model the carved faces of former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to within 3mm. The subsequent models could then be used to help archaeologist rebuild the famous faces, should they fall victim to any further erosion of the granite rockface in which they are set.

CyArk has identified a hotlist of several ‘at-risk’ sites, including the Acropolis in Athens, which is being exposed to increasing levels of acid rain. Also on the list are Peru’s ancient city of Machu Picchu and the Maya city of Tikal in Guatemala.

“It’s cutting-edge stuff. Working on Mount Rushmore will give us the opportunity to put Scotland on the world stage.” David Mitchell

Both are thought to have been permanently damaged by tourism and over-forestation. The team’s ultimate goal is to model 500 of the planet’s greatest historical sites over five years: work has already begun on the catacombs of ancient Rome, and Monte Albn in Mexico. Other ancient locations earmarked include Cambodia’s incredible Angkor Wat and the former Egyptian capital Thebes. There has already been vocal interest from several European nations keen to preserve their heritage with the team’s equipment – but the next job will be closer to home, when the group scans the Scottish Neolithic village of Skara Brae, which is at danger from encroaching tides.

International organisations first came knocking when the team demonstrated their skills on Stirling Castle and Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, near Edinburgh. David Mitchell, director of the technical conservation group at Historic Scotland, tells TheObserver of the moment CyArks creator Ben Kacyra first saw his team’s work: “When Ben saw the work we were doing he said we were miles ahead of anyone else and was blown away,” says Mitchell. “We have worked with Glasgow School of Art for a number of years on laser scanning and became the first group to use this technology on heritage sites. It can pick out millions of points on a monument down to an accuracy of 3mm, which has never been done before. It’s cutting-edge stuff. Working on Mount Rushmore will give us the opportunity to put Scotland on the world stage.” Once Skara Brae has been scanned, the team hope to continue mapping Neolithic Orkney, all of which faces destruction at the hands of the Atlantic Ocean. Mitchell hopes to complete a ‘Scotland 10’ before rolling the technology out across the world.

Archaeologists are already wishing CyArk could have saved some recently perished ancient treasures. And though the Japanese government are heading plans to rebuild the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan – blown to pieces by the Taliban in 2001 – they admit that their task would have been made infinitely easier with the team’s 3D model. Other landmarks in danger from terrorism, natural disaster, climate change and war include China’s Longmen Grottoes and the inimitable Taj Mahal. Kacyra is delighted to have the Scots team on board for five years, and hopes the lasers can help out some of the world’s poorer nations. “I hope we can continue our collaboration beyond the Scotland 10 and CyArk 500 and eventually transfer our technology to developing countries,” he says. Of course, Scots aren’t the only experts using laser technology to map ancient monuments – a team led by Zahi Hawass have recently completed scanning the Great Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza, and have turned their sights on the tombs of Tutankhamun and co in the Valley of the Kings.

Forest Conservation Practiced by the Ancient Maya?

The ancient Maya civilization of Central South America apparently understood acutely how their fate was inextricably linked with that of the forest around them. New research at the site of Tikal in modern Guatemala, by a team from the University of Cincinnati led by paleoethnobotanist David Lentz, has discovered that during the Classic period (c. 250 AD to 900 AD), the Maya practiced a form of forest conservation. Further, the team have speculated that when the practice ceased, it may have had grave consequences for Maya society.

They were not allowed to cut down what were calling the sacred groves, says Lentz, speaking to Journal of Archaeological Science. From our research we have learned that the Maya were deliberately conserving forest resources. Their deliberate conservation practices can be observed in the wood they used for construction and this observation is reinforced by the pollen record.

The practice appears to have been abandoned in the Late Classic period, with the ascendancy of a powerful new leader, Jasaw Chan Kawiil. The Tikal Maya had been beaten up and had fallen to second-rate status prior to his ascendancy, Lentz explains. Jasaw Chan Kawiil led an army to the heartland of a competing city, Calakmul, captured their ruler, bound him, brought him back and sacrificed him and it totally reversed their fortunes in a very dramatic way.

The Maya forests provided timber, fuel, food, fiber and medicine in addition to the ecosystem services of cleansing the air and water. — Professor David Lentz, University of Cincinnati.

The Tikal Maya were top dogs again, and they decided to reflect it in the building of spectacular new temples that required very specific types of long, straight trees able to bear the weight of thousands of tones of stones. The sacred groves some of which contained stands of timber as old as 200 years were plundered, to the extent that new copses had to be planted altogether sometime prior to the building of the final temple, Temple III or Temple of the Jaguar Priest, around 810 AD.

By that stage, things had started to go awry for the Tikal Maya again, and the whole city was abandoned by around the 10th century. Why so? Perhaps, suggests Lentz, because the delicate balance of the forest eco-system had been upset by such heavy deforestation, which was further accelerated by the Maya cutting down trees for firewood and choking the air with carbon dioxide.

When you clear all the forests, it changes the hydrologic cycle, says Lentz. The world is like a flat surface with all the trees acting as sponges on it. The trees absorb the water. Without the trees, there is no buffer to stop the water from runoff. That causes soil erosion, which then chokes the rivers and streams. With no trees, you lose water retention in the soil or aquifers so the ground dries up and then there is less transpiration, so therefore less rainfall as well.

Naturally, there are important lessons to be learned by the Tikal Maya experience. Forests provide many benefits to society, says Lentz. The Maya forests provided timber, fuel, food, fiber and medicine in addition to the ecosystem services of cleansing the air and water. Just as forests provided essential resources for the ancient Maya, the same is true for our civilization today.

The University of Cincinnati teams research is the first major work carried out at Tikal in over 40 years, and is unique in that it is focused on the economic, agricultural, social and cultural practices of the Maya, rather than the fate and fortunes of the ruling classes, as is often the norm. They plan to return to the site in February 2010, and hopefully find some answers as to when deforestation occurred, what trees were used when and where the sacred groves were located.