Looking Deeper

Looking Deeper

   Many parts of technology are baffling, even something as ordinary as jet planes landing themselves which was once viewed as futuristic but today is almost commonplace (autonomous self-driving cars are only now entering this phase with Cadillac being the latest car manufacturer to announce its high-end models carrying the feature).  The reason I say baffling is that the numbers are difficult to grasp, hundreds of thousands, or millions (now quadrillions!) computations each second.

   Now comes LIDAR (light detection and radar) which has been scanning ancient sights since 2012.  Able to penetrate openings in the jungle cover and shooting a pulse 200,000 times each second, LIDAR has been revealing worlds we thought we knew but have now discovered we knew little about.  The most recent work in Asia has shown Angkor Wat to be a city about three times the size of Atlanta, complete with water management systems that both captured and diverted the monsoon rains, thus increasing crop yields; homes were elevated, ponds were common, roads were built along with canals, and all of it disappeared in the 15th century.  Now, other undiscovered cities are being captured, as they have been in Latin America (the temple at Chichen Itza was also found to be a sprawling city that extended much farther than archeologists estimated).  

   Coupled with the radar imagery comes ground penetrating radar and GPS-guided magnetometers finishing a four-year scan of Stonehenge and their findings are shattering our early versions of the site.  Smithsonian features this as their cover story, and graphically highlights paths and newly discovered pits (which remain a mystery as they are too large for burials or waste and difficult to construct using the main digging tool of the time, antler horns), leading archeologists to wonder if the Stonehenge site itself was off limits to most, something meant to be viewed by the worshipers but entered only by a select few (this theory is due to Stonehenge being at the point of a triangle from the newsly discovered pits).  Indeed, earlier diggings within Stonehenge itself (as recent as 1839 but mostly in 1620 by the Duke of Buckingham) produced little...no treasure but many skulls of animals and remains of charcoal and coal.

   Moving forward, these recent findings might extend beyond ancient sites and our search for what may be hiding beneath us.  Perhaps these findings are but a small example of our own search to discover the hidden landscape of those around us and maybe even ourselves.  A fascinating glimpse of this comes from an older book titled, Who Are You? by Malcolm Godwin.  His subtitle alone, 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself, raises a curious question of how do we view others, much less ourselves.  Skimming over a range of our friends and families, we seem to actually do just that, skim.  But underneath might lie sprawling cities of depth and history...

   We can only guess at maladies such as depression and anxiety, phobias and fears.  But there are also hidden stories (how many actual stories of war have been told...my own dad passed away telling only one), hidden anecdotes, hidden memories.  Many of us feel that others simply aren't interested or we don't want to be too revealing, perhaps accounting for the increase in the use of anonymous access when using technology.  But among ourselves, our close friends and family, peeking through the dense canopy might be just a matter of asking.