The massive reach of Mayan civilization is all the more surprising given that they never used the wheel or working animals.
At their peak, the Maya may have covered an area twice the size of medieval England and numbered from 10 to 15 million people.
Space archaeologist and researcher, William James Veall, has taken advantage of shrinking Antarctic ice to study its rocky coasts...
...uncovering what he believes to be an astonishing series of geoglyph human heads that could indicate lost human settlement.
The findings may support theories of an ancient Antarctic civilization that were first put forward in the 1730s...
...when French geographer published a speculative ice-free map of the southern continent based on “ancient knowledge.”
Given that European “discovery” of Antarctica did not come until 1819, Veall believes other peoples must have arrived first.
In his search of satellite imagery, Veall says he has found “forty or so” of the human heads and animal portraits...
...as well as nearly one hundred “pecked symbols” that may be from a “Phoenician genre” alphabet indicating dates and places.
Among the possible creators, Veall considers Phoenician or Minoan explorers the most likely to have reached Antarctica...
...and he believes, as examined in his book “Portraits of the Gods,” that ancient sea peoples spread far wider across the world.
In another more confirmable Antarctic finding, ecologist Heather Lynch teamed with NASA to study satellite images of the Danger Islands...
...tracing back mysterious giant black streaks on the ice to make an unexpected natural discovery in 2014.
The photos revealed the dark streaks were penguin droppings leading to a massive super penguin colony that was unknown to science.
An expedition was sent to the islands in 2015, but upon arrival they found there were far too many birds to be counted by hand.
They created a composite of drone images stitched together by A.I. and analyzed this collage for signs of penguin nests.
Their research revealed a colony of 751,527 couples of penguins, meaning a population of at least 1,503,054, not counting chicks.
Examination of earlier satellite images has shown the super-colony has been in existence since at least 1959...
...and raises the question as to what other massive animal gatherings could still be hidden in plain sight.
The mysterious stone head statues of Easter Island in Polynesia have long dwelled in the imaginations of Western civilizations.
Some are as tall as 40 feet and weigh as much as 75 tons, and it has been certain how the 887 statues came to populate the island.
For decades, theories ranged from alien intervention, to secret lost technologies, to transport by volcanic explosion.
Satellite clues uncovered by University of Hawaii in 2005, however, may finally reveal the true origins of the gigantic stone heads.
Light-sensitive photographs, taken by satellites in 2001 and 2002, uncovered signs of primitive roads across Easter Island.
They found nearly 20 miles of ancient paths used to “walk” the Moai with ropes from a quarry to their resting to locations.
The Moai lean slightly forward, suggesting they were purposely built to wobble down the roads to their final resting places...
Recent satellite imagery has revealed new evidence of pre-Colombian human civilizations in a remote area of southern Brazil.
The hidden foundations indicate fortified villages likely housed to up to one million unidentified people between 1250 and 1500.
The villages were located incredibly far from major rivers in parts of the Amazon thought to be uninhabited before Europeans arrived.
At least 81 archeological sites were found containing ceramics and tools, as well as 104 bizarre ground patterns, or geoglyphs.
It’s unclear what purpose these massive geoglyphs, formed by ditches dug into large and complex geometric shapes, actually served.
Researchers believe there may have been up to 1,500 villages in the area, two thirds of which have yet to be discovered...