The latest technology in figuring out the layout of ancient cities without unearthing them involves sending a laser beam and then calculating how long it took to arrive at the receiver. This LiDAR technology has found that around 2000 years ago, over a thousand cities were connected to one another with a network of roads. 

The region, located close to the Mexican border, featured that these 177 kilometers most likely allowed people from the hundreds of settlements around to travel back and forth and possibly trade with one another. 

The Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin excavations have previously unearthed the largest Mayan stone pyramid in history at the city of El Mirador called La Danta, comprising 205,508 limestone blocks. 

Published in early December 2022, in the article, "LiDAR analysis in the contiguous Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin, Guatemala" in the  Cambridge Press, scientists have analyzed raised beds that indicate a large network.

Sports centers, pyramids, water canals, and reservoirs were located by scientists and are also based on information from the 417 previously known cities around the area.
The researchers noted, "The magnitude of the labor in the construction of massive platforms, palaces, dams, causeways, and pyramids dating to the Middle and Late Preclassic periods throughout the MCKB suggests a power to organize thousands of workers and specialists, ranging from lime producers, mortar and quarry specialists, lithic technicians, architects, logistics and agricultural procurement specialists, and legal enforcement and religious officials, all operating under a political and ideological homogeneity.”

While some of the surface architecture detected with LiDAR were unable to analyze "invisible houses" that still indicated pottery, the scientists have also theorized that the ancient civilizations connected by this massive man-made causeway had a unifying central point as seen by "the consistency of architectural forms and patterns, ceramics, sculptural art".

The study has also found information that may dispute what is previously believed about the typical Mesoamerican civilizations regarding their population density. City networks that are connected as such are proof that these people ate, slept, and drank in densely populated areas.
It was back in October last year 2022 when the same technology was used by the US National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) to look into Campeche, located deep in the Peten Basin region in Mexico.