 The ancient Mayan civilization are one of the biggest enigmas regarding societal collapse. What these people seem to have achieved and what happened to them are some of the most dramatic sways that captivates our current confusion. With the birth of Lidar we are discovering far more. What will a sweep of the desert reveal you have to wonder? And with such technologies that are clearly capable of showing us the scale of the past in the ancient setting of advancements that we are only just beginning to get our heads around. The ancient Maya are mysterious to us. Not because of what we know about them, but it's because of what we don't know. We are guilty of painting a picture of this incredible civilization without the facts. The world currently holds an understanding of many ancient cultures that are not based on factual documentation, but rather based on assumptions to fit a common narrative that is now beginning to unravel and fade. You must understand that the truth of all these ancient things are far more perplexing than the lie. A lie by design. The truth takes time to understand and we human beings have a relatively short amount of time. This leads us on a path of self-prosperity that has blinded the masses for countless years. This is now a time for the lies to melt away and for the true meaning of why we don't know who we are to prevail. The Mesoamerican landscape is altered dramatically by the work of man and the power of the human imagination. Mayan engineers, architects, farmers, workers, and trade people were not restricted and this led to an explosion of interest in developing things of the imagination into reality we see before us. It's unclear how the Mayan emerged. Some do theorize that Mesoamerica was a vast camp of over 2 million refugees who established the Mayan state after the Great Flood, but that's just hypothetical and the latest discovery by means of the technology-advanced lidar sweep is shedding new light on these people in unprecedented detail, the likes of which is simply tantalizing. Pyramids with the flat top are what the Mayan architects are famed for establishing, but we don't really know what they were for other than the usual ceremonial use answers that seem to fit this common narrative that we keep referring to, but the fact remains that we don't really know and the latest discovery is being held as the oldest and largest Mayan pyramid ever constructed, unnoticed till now and only discovered by the use of lidar technology which takes away the vegetation to allow us to peer into the past in stunning detail. Researchers using the technology claim to have dated this construction to between 1,800 years before Christ using a Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature and go on to say that, to our knowledge, this is the oldest monumental construction ever found in the Maya area and the largest in the entire pre-Hispanic history of the region, although the site exhibits some similarities to the earlier Olmick center of San Lorenzo. This and other ceremonial complexes of the same period suggest the importance of common work in the initial development of the Mayan civilization. The discovery took place 850 miles west of Mexico City where it is thought the Mayan began to emerge in the region known as the Mayan lowlands, the cradle of this once astonishing civilization. The initial construction of the platform is believed to have begun around 1,000 BC, based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal inside the complex, but the absence of any known earlier building at this location suggests that at least up until that period, the people living in the region, likely the precursors of the classic Maya, moved between temporary camps to hunt and gather food. It has researchers speculating over how and why they suddenly decided to build such a massive permanent structure. Potentially the total volume of the platform and the building on top is at least 130 million cubic feet, meaning it is bigger even than the largest Egyptian pyramid and the researchers calculated that it would have taken 5,000 people, more than six years of full time work to build, with planning and raw material resourcing numbing the mind as to how it was pulled off. The researchers carrying out this investigation was quoted as spouting the following words that we think this was a ceremonial center, a place of gathering, possibly involving processions and other rituals that we can only imagine. Note the use of the term we can only imagine, again they don't know for sure. No residential building has been found on or around the structure, so it's unclear how many people may have lived nearby, but the large size of the platform leads some people to think that the builders of this massive structure gradually were leaving a different lifestyle behind them, likely aided by the cultivation of corn, evidence of which has also been found at the site. John Loche, an archaeologist studying early history in the area says that the sheer size is astonishing, but this archaeologist does not think however that the structure itself is evidence of a settled lifestyle, stating that monumental construction by pre-sedentary people are not uncommon globally. Loche adds that what it does unmistakably show is an advanced ability for people to collaborate, probably in the strongly egalitarian fashion that was typical of early societies in the Maya region. The Lidar researchers agree and think the platform was built by a community without a strong social hierarchy. As potential evidence they point to the even older ceremonial site at San Lorenzo, 240 miles to the west in a region that was settled at the time by the Olmik people, built at least 400 years earlier than the stunning discovery in the Mayan lowlands. San Lorenzo features an artificial terrace hill that may have had a similar function, but it also has colossal human statues that may indicate that some people held higher status in society than others, and that the Olmik may somehow be connected to the ancient Indian culture, further backing the theory of widespread displacement after cataclysmic occurrences that led to the great flood. But what do you the subscribers of the Lost History Channel think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.