The survey revealed, in areas quite close to known and even famous and well-visited Mayan sites such as Tikal, more than 60,000 previously unsuspected ancient houses, palaces, defensive walls, fortresses, and other structures as well as quarries, elevated highways connecting urban centers, and complex irrigation and terracing systems that would have been capable of supporting intensive agriculture. Previously scholars had believed that only scattered city-states had existed in an otherwise sparsely populated region, but the Lidar images make it clear, [...] that 'scale and population density had been grossly underestimated.