Using laser scanning technology, researchers have found traces of 2,500-year-old cities in the Amazon rainforest. Complete with a complex network of farmland and roads, the discovery is the oldest and largest of its kind in the region.

Located in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, the dense system of pre-Hispanic structures lies in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountains, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science. Over 20 years of research preempted the find, but it wasn’t until the Ecuadorian government employed lidar—a remote sensing technology that surveys a landscape using lasers—that the ancient urban centers came to light.

[www.smithsonianmag.com]

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