| How a Lost City Could Make You Rich |
| Written By Jason Williams |
The markets are closed today in the U.S. We’re not officially a Christian country, but we sure do take off a lot for those holidays.Today is Good Friday. It’s a religious holiday that commemorates Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and his death at Calvary.In a few days, we’ll be celebrating his resurrection from the dead, on Easter Sunday. In case you were curious, I’m baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. And my mother is a priest.I’ve always been fascinated by religion, though; all religions. I think for me, it’s the historical part. Studying human religion is like peering through a looking glass at our collective history.Sure, there’s not a lot of proof that all the stories in all the religious tomes are 100% true, be they of monotheistic or polytheistic cultures. But if not an exact historical record, they give us insight into the culture of the day.That’s not exactly the intro I had planned when I sat down to write this, but it’s a religious holiday and those are the words that came out. They do, however, lead me to what I really want to talk about today.It’s a technological innovation that’s poised to completely change the world. And I just had a very personal experience with it I’d like to share…Indulge Your PassionI enjoy history. I even contemplated majoring in it in college. But when you make a passion a career, you sometimes lose the passion that led you to it in the first place.So I picked something that I was good at, that I enjoyed, and that would allow me to indulge in my passions when I wanted to. I studied finance and economics.Thanks to those degrees, I’ve been able to travel all over the world investigating investment opportunities. And I’ve also been able to indulge my passion for history by being a tourist for parts of those visits.I was in Medellín visiting a cannabis farm a few years ago. Once the formalities were over and I’d seen what I’d come to see, I was able to take a little excursion out to the countryside to learn more about the culture and the history of the region.I saw things from the recent past, like one of Pablo Escobar’s mansions. And I saw ancient history as I climbed thousands of steps up to the top of El Peñón de Guatapé; a massive boulder standing out in the middle of the jungle like a skyscraper in a residential community. It was quite a hike and several people in my group had to turn back because of altitude sickness. But the experience was worth the struggle.Hiding Right in Front of MeThat’s how I like to do my business trips. I get my work done. I do what I came to do, and then I indulge my passions for travel and exploration.And just last week, I got the surprise of a lifetime on another trip to the beautiful Republic of Colombia.I was there for my friend’s wedding. The groom is Lebanese and the bride is Colombian, and they decided the Caribbean coast where she spent many vacations as a child was where they wanted to share their commitment to each other with their friends and families.Needless to say, I was excited for any reason to get back to Colombia — I’ve fallen in love with the country and its people — and there’s not much better a reason to travel than celebrating your friends’ love.But what I didn’t realize until I got there was that I’d come face to face with a technology that’s going to revolutionize the way global society operates.I know I’ve been all over the place today: Christianity, world religion, what to major in, and my love of history. But I promise if you keep reading, they’ll all tie together in the end.You see, just a few miles from the luxury hotel I had the pleasure of staying in was an archaeological site exploring what amounts to a mostly lost civilization.Before the Spanish got to the New World, there were already a lot of people living here. The Incas, the Aztecs, the Araweté, and hundreds of other tribes called this place home.But there are likely countless other tribes and even great civilizations like those who built Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes. And just down the street from my hotel, they were actively discovering one.The Tairona was a mysterious civilization whose empire once extended across parts of the Caribbean coast and up into the Sierra Nevada region of South America. But up until now, very little was known of them.The Spanish have records of their gold jewelry, and the history of the settlement of South America says they were fierce warriors who resisted the Spanish for a long time despite the invaders’ better weapons.But as Spanish influence in the region grew, the Tairona were forced to flee higher into the mountains and abandon their settlements and cities.Some of the Tairona culture still survives today, but much of what is known about them is from stories passed down through the oral tradition.That’s all changing right now, though, thanks to a technological discovery helping researchers “see through” the jungle canopy to the lost and forgotten man-made structures below.And thanks to this technology, archaeologists have uncovered eight sites where previously unknown ancient cities could be located. Two have been explored and two previously unknown cities have been found. And the archaeologists in charge think this is just the beginning thanks to this new form of technology. |
A Million Little Pieces Lasers
The technology I’m talking about is called LiDAR. That’s short for Light Detection and Ranging. And it essentially lets you see through things. In this case, it was the dense jungle vegetation keeping these cities hidden for so many centuries.
LiDAR fires hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of laser pulses toward the ground every second. It does this from instruments fitted to the bottom of drones or helicopters (sometimes even airplanes).
The millions of data points generated by these hundreds of thousands of laser points each second paints a detailed 3D map of the topography beneath the jungle canopy. And it also picks out man-made structures that were previously hidden beneath the vegetation.
The researchers near Santa Marta fitted three LiDAR units to the bottom of a helicopter and pointed them in different directions in the hopes that together they would be able to get the lasers through the thick foliage.
And they found a city that’s been completely unknown practically since it was abandoned during the Spanish conquest of Colombia in the 17th century.
But what’s really amazing about this city — to me at least — is that it’s a good 650 years older than the famed site of Machu Picchu in Peru.
This is one of the oldest cities in this hemisphere. And we just discovered its existence.
Not only that, but we discovered it in a tourist region whose beaches are lined with luxury hotels and whose jungle pathways are traversed by hikers seeking adventure.
Millions of people have probably walked right past this place without having any idea what they were missing.
But thanks to LiDAR, we’ve found it and we may have found even more, suggesting the Tairona’s empire extended much farther than anyone initially thought.
So now let’s tie all my random tangents together and talk about the really exciting (and profitable) uses of this new technology.
Bringing It All Together
You see, LiDAR isn’t just used for finding lost cities in the jungle. Its applications are far broader. It’s actually useful for people who aren’t channeling their inner Indiana Jones.
It’s LiDAR that will allow a lot of the technology we’ve been hearing about for years to become a reality. And it will be incorporated into a lot of existing technology.
Think about drones. They’re around. People have them and fly them. If those were all fitted with LiDAR, we could be mapping out the entire planet just by collecting the data created by drone enthusiasts.
And we’re going to need a digital map of the world if we ever hope to have self-driving cars that don’t run right off the road and into a ravine next to it. The cars have to know where to drive. And they can’t just use an ADC map book.
LiDAR is what we’ll use to create those digital maps of the roads. But not just the pavement — the jersey walls on either side, the street signs and mailboxes, even the trees lining the driveway of your favorite golf course.
If the cars don’t know they’re there, they won’t know not to hit them. LiDAR will show us where it’s safe to drive and where there’s no road.
Robots will need a digital map of the world to operate as well. How do they know where to turn right and left if there’s not a digital representation of our world they can access with their microchips?
They don’t. And that’s another reason why LiDAR will be so important.
Basically, everything we’re creating for the internet of things, every device that will operate on the 5G network, every piece of technology from here forward will be at least partially dependent on LiDAR.
That’s the opportunity. That’s the investment. And that’s what ties all my seemingly random thoughts together today.
