Mayan Superhighway System

Even after thousands of years of exploring Earth, we're still uncovering new things like an ancient "superhighway" in the Guatemalan rain forest. Hidden beneath a thick layer of vegetation, the [blank] of roads stretches over 150 miles and was most likely built by the Mayan empire some 2,000 years ago.The newly mapped roads are connected to the ruins of El Mirador (sometimes called the Kan Kingdom) in northern Guatemala. Archaeologists believe El Mirador was [blank] around the 6th century BCE and was at its most powerful around the early first century CE. At that time, it had a population of as many as a quarter of a million, a quarter the size of Rome itself at the time. It also has some of the largest pyramids in the world. It was the heart of the Mayan civilization and naturally needed some major roadways.The roads of El Mirador have been known about since 1967, but scientists had no idea [blank] extensive they were until now. The thick jungle obscured the remnants of the road, making it difficult to see from the air. Researchers got around that using plane-mounted lidar, which can penetrate the forest canopy. It bounces laser pulses off the Earth, then the reflections are received by the plane and the distance readings are interpreted as a topographical map. The system is capable of how [blank] 560,000 dots per second, providing an accurate topographical map of the land surrounding El Mirador.