questions. breaking news, the an awful year. the health secretary labels crowded scenes at london stations last night as "irresponsible" — the transport secretary says extra police officers will be deployed republic of ireland is going to to enforce the rules. introduce restrictions on flights from the united kingdom, after the republic of ireland discussions were held this is to restrict air and sea travel afternoon. republic of ireland is with britain from midnight. now joining afternoon. republic of ireland is nowjoining that afternoon. republic of ireland is now joining that list. and the netherlands, afternoon. republic of ireland is nowjoining that list. time for some italy and belgium ban weather. the showers have been flights between the uk as concern gi’ows over the new coronavirus variant queues form at supermarkets in england, as shoppers adapt their plans for pretty wide spread. just to our the festive period. west, we've got a rather bigger area of cloud. this is the next area of low pressure that is going to be bringing some fairly strong winds and cloud and rain as well. showers we re and cloud and rain as well. showers were northern ireland and scotland, it will turn quite blustery here for a time. the rain associated with increasingly mild air, so by the end of the night plymouth seeing a temperature of about 11 degrees, nine in cardiff. tomorrow, register the day for england and wales. the rain pushes it eastwards through time. gradually turning a bit brighter later on. showers could manage to give some lengthy outbreaks of rain. further north, particularly in scotland. very mild day for parts of england and wales. temperatures reaching as high as 15 celsius, but turning colder across the north. hello, this is bbc news. the headlines... 18 million people in england are told to stay at home — on the first day of new tier 4 coronavirus restrictions. similar restrictions are introduced across the whole of wales — and a three week lockdown will be imposed in mainland scotland from boxing day. the health secretary labels crowded scenes at london stations last night as "irresponsible" — the transport secretary says extra police officers will be deployed to enforce the rules. the netherlands, italy and belgium ban flights to and from the uk because of concerns about the new coronavirus variant. the republic of ireland is also about to announce restrictions as well. let's just remind you what is going on in belgium, in terms of brexit talks. we havejust going on in belgium, in terms of brexit talks. we have just had a tweet from michelle barney in this crucial moment from the eu negotiations or... the talks seem to be stuck very much at the moment over fishing. let's see what response we get from david frost on that. we are back at the top of the hour. now on bbc news, amanda ruggeri explores the new technology that's allowing archaeologists to explore the hundreds of mayan structures that are still hidden beneath the amazon. located in northern guatemala, the maya biosphere reserve is the largest rainforest north of the amazon, and one of the world's most important hotspots for biodiversity. it also was once the heart of the maya civilisation. today, hundreds of houses, fortifications, temples and other structures lie hidden beneath the jungle. i like this part. but some archaeologists are determined to change that. they have devoted their careers to getting the jungle to give up its secrets. and new technology has revealed that, despite decades of work, they have only begun to scratch the surface. there's a deep hole and that is where they are digging right now. don't let me down. the maya city of holmul has been an obsession of archaeologist francisco estrada—belli for the last 20 years. he calls it the gift that keeps on giving. trying not to get stuck. in recent years, his work has been aided by the use of lidar, a technology currently transforming archaeology. i have come here, on the border with belize, to learn more about what estrada—belli has discovered. this was one of the most populous places on earth 1,000 years ago. if you think about it. we are estimating 8—11 million people in an area of 90,000 square kilometres. and yet they were using very sustainable practices so they could do this for 2,000 years. and so you started excavating in 2000? that was our first season. it was very adventurous. we worked for two weeks and then it started raining. we did not have any cars and the roads were all flooded so we got out on horses. this city dates back to 800 bc. it was abandoned 1,700 years later. one of its mysteries that estrada—belli has been trying to solve — its empty tomb. i think i know why they abandoned it. because the date of the building matches with a guy who was supposed to be from here being sacrificed at tikal in the year 748. 0k. after that, pretty much all monumental construction stopped here. so tell me what that would have meant. so, tikal was defeating its arch enemy, the snake kingdom. they had already defeated the snake kings and now they were going after its former allies or vassals. this is historical archaeology. we don'tjust talk about processes any more and theories. now we talk about specific events and specific people. because we can read the inscriptions. and yet, this tomb was almost destroyed before estrada—belli or any other archaeologists were able to discover it. here is the tomb chamber. wow. looters came and dug a hole right behind this doorway. and they missed the structure with the frieze by 20 centimetres. i'll show you. that is the frieze right there. that's the corner image of one of the dead kings. you can imagine what they would have done. they would have thought "there is definitely something cool behind this carving" and they would just blast through it. he's all there. it goes for eight metres that way and another five this way. he has been damaged on purpose by the ancient maya. nothing else really is damaged in the whole carving. just his face, his necklace, a little ceremonial head. the maya believed everything had a soul, including images of people and things. so when they were burying something, they would let the soul out by killing the image. that's the god of the underworld. he's holding something. he's holding a hieroglyph. two syllables, words. the first, and the food. so he is holding the first food. that is the eye? that is the spiral eye. he has got blue under the eyes. he is tired. he's been up all night because he is the god of the night sky. this glyph here, "he is the vassal of the snake kings." what did you feel in that moment when you realised? when i saw the glyph, i thought my career has just made a big turn. it was like, jackpot. estrada—belli was lucky to find this frieze. the jungle does not make for easy archaeology. 100 years ago, an archaeologist from harvard first came to holmul and discovered these temples, but he missed the oldest carving which dates all the way back to 350 bc. the notes were rather incomplete because the archaeologist died shortly after working here. by a mysterious disease that he contracted here. he returned from here with this massive sore on his nose that never healed. that is what happens with this bug. he died and never finished his reports. it was actually published by one of his friends at harvard, posthumously. they forgot to mention this tunnel. he had found a window of an earlier pyramid and stopped. so we kept digging and there is this massive carving that explained what the temple is all about. are these beetles still around? yes. it's called the assassin bug. good, i'm glad we are going in now. welcome to the underworld. let me see if i can turn the light on. watch your step. we're going to walk around the exterior and go to the front. and this is the front of the building. whoa! god, it's a lot bigger than i was expecting. yep, all perfectly preserved for 2,400 years. what you have is the massive head of an earth monster with the mouth open. these are the teeth. here inside the mouth of this monster is the face of an old man. even today, the maya in guatemala worshipped an old man. he has the same wrinkles and teeth like that. it's the image of the god of the underworld, it's not going to change. jungle creatures and diseases are just two of the problems that archaeologists have had to face. but historically, the bigger threats to the rainforest and its archaeology have been logging and looting. this is el diablo. the devil. we don't know why they chose that name. i know! yeah! it's an early classic building, between 300—600ad. we are going to try and see some of the earliest version of this building. what was it used for? this was a funerary temple. here is where the remains of the first king rests. this "devil temple" was allegedly named because the sides are dangerously steep. but maybe more fitting is that its king, who ruled in the late fourth century ad, was buried with the remains of six sacrificed children. two metres below you, we found the tomb. that is where we found the tomb. two metres underneath. we are standing on top of a king's tomb? yes, from 378—380 ad. but nothing is in there any more? no, we removed and excavated everything. it is in a national museum. the looters had not got to it? everything was still there. the chamber was completely sealed. when we opened, we still feel a cold breeze and the smell, like something was in putrefaction process when we opened it. in 2010, when we found the tomb of the first king, we were working, unfortunately looters can come and they are really well organised, and they can take everything from you. one day, we hired a group of guards to protect it. but it didn't work because some of them tried to steal from the tomb. i confront them, one of them took his gunshot, at that time, i think i was a good liar, i said this is a computer, we have internet — that we did not have — and "we were filming everything." then he stopped. another major challenge for the maya biosphere reserve is illegal logging, often tied to drug trafficking. and when the jungle is cleared, it does notjust affect the rainforest and the animals, but the maya sites which are often irretrievably damaged. they will clear the forest around the archaeological sites, grow marijuana, loot the sites, and then collect to harvest. and they put all they have got on small planes to go to the us. several illegal activities are still going on in guatemala. illegal logging, which is not a problem here specifically, but in other parts of this region it is a big problem. drug—trafficking. we're fortunate here at holmul, but out in western guatemala, they cut the forest to grow airstrips, planes from colombia land they are and it is a transshipment place to go across into mexico, and from there into the usa. they burn all the forest in the process. this area has done much better because it was given in concession to local communities for sustainable logging. in the last 20 years, the local communities have stopped the drug—trafficking, the land invasions, the deforestation, and that is why sites like this are still covered by forest. we think the model that we have in place here works much better because the local communities are empowered, they have an incentive to protect the forest, which is the sustainable logging, and for as long as that can continue, they will protect the forest. freddie molino san cino is vice president of the arbol verde concession, which has been given to local residents for sustainable logging. while logging might seem anathema to saving a rainforest, it turns out that concessions like these can have quite the opposite effect. by giving local residents economic incentive to conserve the rainforest and by being run with strict adherence to sustainable management principles, community concessions like this one have actually protected the reserve. one of the biggest challenges to archaeologists in the maya biosphere reserve is not narco trafficking, logging or even looting. it's the fact that it is extremely difficult to find or identify structures in a jungle as wild and thick as this one. and that's where a technology that is relatively new to archaeology, lidar, has been transformative. so, this hill is supposedly a pyramid. they think it might be as big as the great pyramid. it's definitely steep, but it looks like a hill, so it's pretty amazing that they are able to find that out through lidar. we are right here. 0nly10% of tikal has actually been excavated and discovered. this feels very indiana jones. lidar is a type of remote sensing technology that is used to create extraordinarily detailed 3d maps and representations. in the reserve, lidar is being employed in two ways. from aircraft, to create topological maps, and from hand—held scanners, to build better 3d models of a particular site or structure. the project that involves beaming lasers from aircraft, the largest archaeological survey ever taken in the maya lowlands, is the initiative of the foundation for mayan cultural and natural heritage. this is amazing. probably preclassic structure. it has never been researched, and it is massive. this is one of the bigger temples in tikal. what is lidar, what makes it such an useful tool? it really strips off the forest canopy. there are billions of laser beams that map individually. each return, every time they hit something in the surface. that will give tremendous use for understanding the forest and the biomass. you said billions of laser beams — how many billions of laser beams? our first dataset had 60 billion returns. that is an incredible amount of data. how long did it take to collect that? only a couple of weeks. it was something like eight flights. it's a 2,100 square kilometres of area that was covered in that amount of time. you obviously have a great appreciation for understanding how sophisticated the mayans where, but did the lidar increase that understanding more? yes. the lidar showed without any doubt that we totally underestimated their engineering capabilities, in terms of landscape modifications, to make the land more sustainable, to irrigate and bring water to places that they cultivate, to stop erosion. it's pretty mind—blowing. that is how i felt. and i thought the maya were pretty sophisticated already, but not at this scale. one of the sites where lidar has been especially helpful is here. lidar is the first step. it shows is everything, gives us the footprint, but then archaeologists still have to go out, get there, check it. lidar makes it so that, as archaeologists, we do not have to spend all of our time just figuring out what is there. instead, we can focus and excavate and address questions that we want to. so much of our time is spent mapping and trying to find places. what lidar has shown us is that we weren't very good at it. a lot of sites around here were abandoned at the end of what we call the classic period. around 900, something like that. but el zotz had people living here up until the 1300s. we're probably somewhere near the old camino real, the new spain road that passed down through central america. and supposedly was built on top of a major pre—columbian through—way. but nobody has pinpointed where that ran through. we wonder if lidar will eventually reveal that to us. that would be amazing. the first king of el zotz was such an important character that a temple was created for him so he would never be forgotten. be careful with these things. they are supporting the roof. when you are here, be careful here. if you are going to fall, fall this way. so don't fall on the sculpture. so, this was all for one king? yes, for the first king. this king was powerful, but he was an extension of power. they were on the top here and we say yes, that has to be defensive. lidar is helping us to recognise everything that this king did to protect him, his family and his legacy. it was the creation of a dynasty. so a find like this tells you that there is a king, then the lidar helps you realise what the context is and the whole landscape and how much more wealthy and powerful he was than you knew from this? yes. everything that they built, we can make more sense about it. and so you had been coming here for 20 years and knew the area really well, but you still had not suspected that this was a major wall? right. i could see there was a wall, but what was the wall doing here? when you see it in the context of many other fortifications in the lidar, it makes more sense. myjob typically is to map things. i mapped a section of the causeway thinking it was a 100m—long wall and had no idea that it continued for 7km. wow. as a causeway, not a wall. when you got that data back and started to put those pieces together, what did you say? i was like "oh, my god," for hours. "oh, my god, look at this." it's very humbling. because you have been mapping and you think you know what you are doing, for all my career, and this thing is so much better than any of us can do. it can do what we do in 20 years in two days. the same work, and it's better. the lidar shows how big the rainforest is and how many trees there are with much greater precision, which can be instrumental in conserving the rainforest. hello, there. today has been another day of sunshine and showers. the showers have been pretty widespread. you can see the speckled shower clouds here on the satellite picture. just our west, we got a rather bigger area of cloud. this is the next area of low pressure that is going to be bringing some fairly strong winds and clouds and rain as well. 0vernight, showers were northern ireland and scotland. it will turn quite blustery here for a time. the winds pick up later further south. the rain associated with increasingly mild air, some of the end of the night plymouth is seeing a damage of about 11 degrees, and nine in cardiff. tomorrow, ranges that for england and wales. it pushes eastwards with time. could bring some localised flooding. turning brighter later on. showers could give some lengthy outbreaks of rain further north, particularly in western scotland. very mild april parts of england and wales. temperatures reaching as high as 15 degrees to south—east england, but 00:28:15,799 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 turning colder across the north.