The area and volume of architectural features of an ancient Mayan stone road stretching 100 km through Mexico have been profiled by use of airborne light imaging and ranging (lidar) measurements.

Constructed in the seventh century, the White Road 1 connects the city of Cobá to the smaller settlement of Yaxuná in the Yucatan Peninsula. The road is theorized to have been built by command of a warrior queen to Lidar image of downtown Yaxuná reveals ancient houses, platforms and pyramids normally hidden by vegetation. Source: Traci Ardren and Dominique Meyer/University of Miamicounteract the rise of Chichén Itzá by invading settlements on the way to Yaxuná.

An international team of researchers used airborne lidar, which is being increasingly deployed as an archaeological tool, to identify more than 8,000 tree-shrouded structures of varying sizes along the road. The data were analyzed to prepare 3D maps of areas covered by impenetrable jungle, revealing that the ancient highway is not a straight line as had been previously assumed. The elevated road veers to incorporate preexisting towns and cities between Cobá and Yaxuná.

The analysis also highlights the complexity of engineering the road, which appears flat despite its construction over undulating terrain. Uneven ground is filled in with huge limestone boulders, and the surface coated with bright, white plaster. The plaster was made by burning limestone and adding lime and water to the mixture with essentially the same formula used by Romans for concrete in the third century B.C.

Scientists from the University of California Riverside, University of Miami, University of California Riverside, University of Houston, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, Cultural Heritage and Archaeology in the Maya Area (Maryland) and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico) contributed to this study, which is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.