Google AI researcher Pietro Miotti let his AI agents loose on some NASA lidar data — where, according to him, they made a staggering discovery: an ancient Maya site lurking deep under the thick canopy of the jungles of Mexico.

“By analyzing NASA lidar data, my AI agents discovered a Maya site in Mexico that, as far as anyone can tell, no one had reported before,” Miotti wrote in a breathless blog post. “It took less than 72 hours to go from a random thought while traveling to an official reply from the Mexican government.”

bong rip

brooo I just discovered ANCIENT ALIENS WITH AI

TECH PRESS GASPS IN AWE

But it didn’t take long for the scientific community to call foul.

“This story is going wild on X and elsewhere,” archeologist and award-winning author Sarah Parcak wrote in a post on Bluesky. “The site was already published by Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli of Tulane University ages ago.”

In a 2025 paper, a team of researchers directed by Estrada-Belli examined lidar data colleceted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, covering 95,000 square kilometers of central America, finding that the ancient Maya population may have been significantly larger than previously estimated, possibly upwards of 16 million people at its peak.

“This is why we have peer review,” Parcak added. “Mexican gov didn’t have it in their database, but that doesn’t mean it is unknown/unmapped.”

10/10 this is some pure Schadenfreude straight to your Ed Zitron.