If I was a billionaire, I’d commission a lidar survey of the entire planet.

The amount of stuff that seems to be hidden beneath forest and snow and mud and ocean is absurd.

It's a shame to think of all the ancient literature and rich history we've lost from these civilizations.

I'm sure they had their Homers and Platos.

So exciting! The number of buildings in the images is insane. I wonder what they'll find if they go down and poke around a bit?

Is there some kind of openstreetmap layer where lidar-surveyed sites are aggregated?

It'd be nice

I'm pretty sure this is related to https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/ancient-builders-of-the-...

Check out Lost Cities with Albert Lin if you want to see some of this stuff being done and previous discoveries. It feels a little docu-dramatized but neat nonetheless.

what kind of lasers / lidar technology is this that is not reflected by trees?

This is exciting as someone who recently discovered Graham Hancock.

Let us bid adieu to that chunk of rain forest. First them archeologists will go scrounging, followed closely by the tourists.

Do these 'historic' finds serve any purpose for our future generations? Or would those trees have served our children better?