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The most astounding place I've ever been
is the Mosquitia Rain Forest in Honduras.

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I've done archaeological fieldwork
all over the world,

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so I thought I knew what to expect
venturing into the jungle,

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but I was wrong.

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For the first time
in my life, I might add.

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(Laughter)

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First of all, it's freezing.

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It's 90 degrees, but you're
soaking wet from the humidity,

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and the canopy of trees is so thick
that sunlight never reaches the surface.

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You can't get dry.

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Immediately, I knew that
I hadn't brought enough clothing.

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That first night, I kept feeling things
moving underneath my hammock,

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unknown creatures brushing and poking
against the thin nylon fabric.

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And I could barely sleep
through all the noise.

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The jungle is loud. It's shockingly loud.

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It's like being downtown
in a bustling city.

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As the night wore on,

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I became increasingly frustrated
with my sleeplessness,

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knowing I had a full day ahead.

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When I finally got up at dawn,

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my sense of unseen things
was all too real.

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There were hoofprints, paw prints,

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linear snake tracks everywhere.

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And what's even more shocking,

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we saw those same animals in the daylight,

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and they were completely unafraid of us.

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They had no experience with people.

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They had no reason to be afraid.

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As I walked toward the undocumented city,
my reason for being there,

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I realized that this was the only place
that I had ever been

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where I didn't see
a single shred of plastic.

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That's how remote it was.

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Perhaps it's surprising to learn

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that there are still places on our planet
that are so untouched by people,

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but it's true.

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There are still hundreds of places
where people haven't stepped for centuries

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or maybe forever.

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It's an awesome time
to be an archaeologist.

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We have the tools and the technology

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to understand our planet
like never before.

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And yet, we're running out of time.

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The climate crisis threatens to destroy
our ecological and cultural patrimony.

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I feel an urgency to my work

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that I didn't feel 20 years ago.

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How can we document everything
before it's too late?

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I was trained as
a traditional archaeologist

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using methodologies that
have been around since the '50s.

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That all changed in July of 2009

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in Michoacán, Mexico.

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I was studying the ancient
Purépecha Empire,

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which is a lesser known
but equally important contemporary

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of the Aztec.

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Two weeks earlier, my team
had documented an unknown settlement,

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so we were painstakingly mapping,
building foundations by hand --

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hundreds of them.

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Basic archaeological protocol
is to find the edge of a settlement

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so you know what you're dealing with,

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and my graduate students
convinced me to do just that.

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So I grabbed a couple of CLIF Bars,
some water, a walkie,

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and I set out alone on foot,

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expecting to encounter "the edge"
in just a few minutes.

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A few minutes passed.

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And then an hour.

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Finally, I reached
the other side of the malpais.

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Oh, there were ancient
building foundations all the way across.

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It's a city?

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Oh, shit.

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(Laughter)

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It's a city.

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Turns out that this
seemingly small settlement

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was actually an ancient urban megalopolis,

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26 square kilometers in size,

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with as many building foundations
as modern-day Manhattan,

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an archaeological settlement so large

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that it would take me
decades to survey fully,

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the entire rest of my career,

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which was exactly how I didn't want
to spend the entire rest of my career --

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(Laughter)

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sweating, exhausted,

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placating stressed-out
graduate students --

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(Laughter)

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tossing scraps of PB and J sandwiches

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to feral dogs,

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which is pointless, by the way,

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because Mexican dogs
really don't like peanut butter.

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(Laughter)

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Just the thought of it bored me to tears.

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So I returned home to Colorado,

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and I poked my head
through a colleague's door.

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"Dude, there's gotta be a better way."

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He asked if I had heard
of this new technology called LiDAR --

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Light Detection And Ranging.

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I looked it up.

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LiDAR involves shooting
a dense grid of laser pulses

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from an airplane to the ground's surface.

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What you end up with
is a high-resolution scan

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of the earth's surface
and everything on it.

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It's not an image,

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but instead it's a dense,
three-dimensional plot of points.

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We had enough money in the scan,

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so we did just that.

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The company went to Mexico,

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they flew the LiDAR

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and they sent back the data.

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Over the next several months, I learned
to practice digital deforestation,

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filtering away trees, brush
and other vegetation

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to reveal the ancient
cultural landscape below.

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When I looked at my first visualization,

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I began to cry,

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which I know comes
as quite a shock to you,

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given how manly I must seem.

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(Laughter)

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In just 45 minutes of flying,

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the LiDAR had collected
the same amount of data

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as what would have taken decades by hand:

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every house foundation,

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building, road and pyramid,

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incredible detail,

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representing the lives
of thousands of people

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who lived and loved and died
in these spaces.

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And what's more, the quality of the data

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wasn't comparable to traditional
archaeological research.

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It was much, much better.

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I knew that this technology would change
the entire field of archaeology

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in the coming years,

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and it did.

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Our work came to the attention
of a group of filmmakers

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who were searching for a legendary
lost city in Honduras.

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They failed in their quest,

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but they instead documented
an unknown culture,

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now buried under a pristine
wilderness rain forest,

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using LiDAR.

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I agreed to help interpret their data,

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which is how I found myself deep
in that Mosquitia jungle,

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plastic-free and filled
with curious animals.

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Our goal was to verify
that the archaeological features

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we identified in our LiDAR

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were actually there on the ground,

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and they were.

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Eleven months later, I returned
with a crack team of archaeologists

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sponsored by the
National Geographic Society

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and the Honduran government.

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In a month, we excavated over 400 objects

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from what we now call
the City of the Jaguar.

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We felt a moral and ethical responsibility
to protect this site as it was,

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but in the short time that we were there,

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things inevitably changed.

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The tiny gravel bar where we first
landed our helicopter was gone.

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The brush had been cleared away
and the trees removed

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to create a large landing zone
for several helicopters at once.

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Without it,

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after just one rainy season,

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the ancient canals that we
had seen in our LiDAR scan

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were damaged or destroyed.

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And the Eden I described
soon had a large clearing,

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central camp,

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lights

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and an outdoor chapel.

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In other words, despite our best efforts
to protect the site as it was,

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things changed.

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Our initial LiDAR scan
of this City of the Jaguar

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is the only record of this place
as it existed just a few years ago.

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And broadly speaking,

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this is a problem for archaeologists.

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We can't study an area
without changing it somehow,

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and regardless, the earth is changing.

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Archaeological sites are destroyed.

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History is lost.

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Just this year, we watched in horror

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as the Notre Dame Cathedral
went up in flames.

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The iconic spire collapsed,

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and the roof was all but destroyed.

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Miraculously, the art historian
Andrew Tallon and colleagues

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scanned the cathedral in 2010 using LiDAR.

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At the time, their goal was to understand
how the building was constructed.

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Now, their LiDAR scan is the most
comprehensive record of the cathedral,

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and it'll prove invaluable
in the reconstruction.

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They couldn't have anticipated the fire

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or how their scan would be used,

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but we're lucky to have it.

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We take for granted that our cultural
and ecological patrimony

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will be around forever.

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It won't.

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Organizations like SCI-Arc
and Virtual Wonders

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are doing incredible work

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to record the world's historic monuments,

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but nothing similar exists
for the earth's landscapes.

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We've lost 50 percent of our rain forests.

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We lose 18 million acres
of forest every year.

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And rising sea levels will make cities,
countries and continents

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completely unrecognizable.

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Unless we have a record of these places,

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no one in the future
will know they existed.

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If the earth is the Titanic,

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we've struck the iceberg,

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everyone's on deck

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and the orchestra is playing.

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The climate crisis threatens to destroy
our cultural and ecological patrimony

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within decades.

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But sitting on our hands and doing nothing

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is not an option.

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Shouldn't we save everything
we can on the lifeboats?

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(Applause)

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Looking at my scans
from Honduras and Mexico,

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it's clear that we need
to scan, scan, scan

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now as much as possible,

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while we still can.

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That's what inspired the Earth Archive,

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an unprecedented scientific effort

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to LiDAR-scan the entire planet,

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starting with areas
that are most threatened.

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Its purpose is threefold.

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Number one: create a baseline record
of the earth as it exists today

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to more effectively mitigate
the climate crisis.

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To measure change, you need
two sets of data:

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a before and an after.

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Right now, we don't have
a high-resolution before data set

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for much of the planet,

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so we can't measure change,

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and we can't evaluate
which of our current efforts

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to combat the climate crisis

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are making a positive impact.

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Number two: create a virtual planet

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so that any number of scientists
can study our earth today.

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Archaeologists like me
can look for undocumented settlements.

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Ecologists can study tree size,

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forest composition and age.

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Geologists can study hydrology,

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faults, disturbance.

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The possibilities are endless.

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Number three: preserve
a record of the planet

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for our grandchildren's grandchildren,

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so they can reconstruct and study
lost cultural patrimony in the future.

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As science and technology advance,

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they'll apply new tools, algorithms,

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even AI to LiDAR scans done today,

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and ask questions that we
can't currently conceive of.

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Like Notre Dame,

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we can't imagine how these
records will be used.

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But we know that they'll
be critically important.

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The Earth Archive is the ultimate gift
to future generations,

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because the truth be told,

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I won't live long enough
to see its full impact,

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and neither will you.

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That's exactly why it's worth doing.

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The Earth Archive is a bet
on the future of humanity.

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It's a bet that together,

00:12:33.331 --> 00:12:34.948
collectively,

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as people and as scientists,

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that we'll face the climate crisis

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and that we'll choose
to do the right thing,

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not just for us today

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but to honor those who came before us

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and to pay it forward
to future generations

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who will carry on our legacy.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)