Traces of a centuries-old ancient city in South Africa

Archaeologists have found traces of a centuries-old city in Sukerbosrand, South Africa, using advanced laser technology,Fox NewsLocals have known about the ruins here for generations, according to Karim Sadr, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.

“Archaeologists from my university excavated several buildings there in the 1970s and 1980s. But people just assumed that these ruins were scattered houses or villages,” said Sadr, who used LiDAR, an airborne laser scanning technology, to uncover the ancient city.

“It was only when I took LiDAR images of the western hills, about 20 square kilometers in size, and examined them in detail that I began to discover corners of man-made structures that were almost invisible in ground-level or aerial photographs because of the vegetation,” he explains. The images reveal a series of stone structures hidden underground.

Sadr used LiDAR technology to survey the first 10 square kilometers in late 2014 and the remaining area in 2015. In 2016, after closely observing the captured images, he realized that these were not scattered houses but part of a city.

The Tswana-speaking community lived in this city from the 15th century until about 200 years ago. There were several other Tswana cities in the area. The Tswana cities collapsed after civil war in the early 19th century.

"I counted about 800 houses here and there could be more. However, it is difficult to determine the number of people in the city at different times, because not all houses are occupied and some houses may contain more people than others. I guess the city never had more than 10,000 people at a time," Sadr said.

Scientists plan to use LiDAR technology to study a wider area around the archaeological site. However, LiDAR cannot help them explore the entire city, and many structures need to be examined directly.

“We want to excavate some parts of the archaeological site. Since the sites are generally not deep, we don’t need to dig up too much soil,” Sadr said. He also raised questions about the spatial boundaries of the city cluster, its borders, external trade links, and why the city was founded so many centuries ago.