News, johannesburg. Now, stav danaos has the weather. We are starting to see some changes to our weather after a very cold week both by day and by night. Slightly less cold air pushing gcioss slightly less cold air pushing across the country through tonight. Heavy and persistent rain in western scotland, drizzle over Western Areas further south. A few clear spells in the south east. It will tend to be oui the south east. It will tend to be our frost free night for most. This week is milder than the big just gone. Rain at times and some of it quite heavy across the west. A little bit of snow mainly over the hills in the north. The pressure cut for monday showers these weather front across the north of the country thanks to low pressure. Higher pressure towards the south and a westerly breeze pushing the milderair infrom and a westerly breeze pushing the milder air in from the atlantic but still a team of cold at the north of the country. It will impact the rain gcioss the country. It will impact the rain across northern scotland, turning out to snow. Some could be quite heavy down to lower levels. Wintry showers for the Northern Isles and further south a lot more cloud. Most of the rain the west, dry a further east but much drier. 7 ii. Hello this is bbc news with tim willcox. The headlines fresh warnings that the nhs under increasing pressure could soon be overwhelmed by coronavirus cases. The Health Secretary says people should all play their part in helping stop the spread. We can all do something to help which is to stay at home, because every time you try to flex the rules that could be fatal and we all have a part to play. It comes as the goverment says asymptomatic testing is set to be made available across england this week, and tens of thousands of people over the age of 80 have been invited to book vaccines. But the British Medical Association wants more focus on also vaccinating healthcare workers. If the governments saying they can vaccinate, or they have the supplies for two million vaccinations per week, its entirely possible to vaccinate the health and Care Workforce within the next two to three weeks and that is what we are calling for. Rescue teams in indonesia have located the black box flight recorders for the boeing passenger plane that crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff. 62 people were on board. Now on bbc news, the new technology that allows archaeologists to explore the hundreds of mayan structures that lie hidden beneath the amazon. Located in northern guatemala, the maya Biosphere Reserve is the largest rainforest north of the amazon, and one of the worlds 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. Theres a deep hole and that is where they are digging right now. Dont let me down. The maya city of holmul has been an obsession of archaeologist Francisco Estrada belli for the last 20 yea rs. He calls it the gift that keeps on giving. Trying not to get stuck. In recent years, estrada bellis 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 1000 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 2000 years. And so you started excavating in 2000 . That was our first season. 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 1700 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. 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 do notjust 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 mssed the structure with the frieze by 20 centimetres. I will show you. That is the frieze right there. Thats the corner image of one of the dead kings. You can imagine what they would have done. They would have thought there was definitely something cool behind this carving and they would just blast through it. Hes 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, 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 is the god of the underworld. He is holding something. He is holding a hieroglyph. Two syllables, words. The first, and the food. So he is holding the first food. That is the eye . He has got blue under the eyes. He is tired. Hes been up all night because he is the god of the night sky. This glyph here. 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. 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 is called the assassin bug. Good, i am glad we are going in now. Welcome to the underworld. Let me see if i can turn the light on. Watch your step. We are going to walk around the exterior and go to the front. And this is the front of the building. Whoa god, it is a lot bigger than i was expecting. Yep, all perfectly preserved for 21100 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 is the image of the god of the underworld, it is 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 do not know why they chose that name. I know yeah it is very, it is an early classic building, between 380680. 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 sites 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 him. Two metres underneath. We are standing on top of a kings 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, there were still 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 didnt 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 i said 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 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 are fortunate here, but out in western guatemala, they cut the forest to grow airstrips, your 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, local communities have stopped the drug trafficking, the land invasions, 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 is the fact that it is extremely difficult to find or identify structures in a jungle as wild as this one. And that is 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. Its definitely steep, but it looks like a hill, so it is 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 heritage. This is amazing. Probably preclassic structure. It has never been researched, and it is massive. This is one of the biggest 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 is a 2100 Square Kilometres of area that was covered in that 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. Its 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 werent 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 13005. Were probably somewhere near the old camino real, the new spain road that passed down through central america. It was supposedly 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 dont 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 powerful he was than you knew from this . Yes. Everything that they built, we can make more sense about it. And so you have 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. 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. Its 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 its 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. After what has been very cold week both by day and by night, we start to see some changes to our weather now, particularly across northern and Western Areas with some less cold air moving in, outbreaks of rain. Though its still pretty chilly for the rest of today across the south and the east of the country, which started off frosty bits of dense fog around. The cloud is thickening up out west with patchy rain and drizzle, persistent rain affecting the north and west of scotland, a bit of snow over the high ground. The breeze picking up too, temperatures recovering, 8 degrees there for sotrnaway and for glasgow. Further south, low single figures for most. Though a degree or so up on what we had yesterday. As we head through tonight, those temperatures continue to climb, more cloud pushes in from the west, the breeze picking up from the south west as well. It is very wet indeed across the north and west of scotland. Perhaps a bit of localised flooding in places. You can see temperature wise, away from the south east, its a mostly frost free night. Lows of around 7 or 8 degrees for parts of scotland and Northern Ireland. For this upcoming week, its going to be an milder certainly than the weekjust gone. There will be quite a bit of rain at times, mainly across northern and Western Areas, a bit of snow likely particularly over the hills in the north. This is the pressure chart for monday and you can see low pressure to the north of the country, lots of isobars across the chart. These whether fronts bringing outbreaks of rain. The milder air making inroads across most of the county, cold air still looms to the north of scotland and that is likely to turn some of the rain into snow across northern scotland, certainly over the high ground, but even down to lower levels and it could be quite heavy. Further south and west, a lot more cloud around, most of the rain will be across Western Areas. Some drier interludes across the south east. Temperatures much higher than they have been of late, 7 11 degrees. The milder air holds on as we go into tuesday across southern and Western Areas. That plume of cold air in the north spreads its way southwards across much of scotland, Northern Ireland and into northern and eastern england. Here, itll be dry and bright with some sunshine, maybe just a few coastal showers but a strong northerly breeze making it feel quite raw. The weather fronts and milder air loom across the south and west so here rather grey, damp but 1 0 11 degrees here versus 3 6 for the north and east. That rain spreads across the country on wednesday, turns a bit drier by the end of the week but you can see the temperatures for this upcoming week much milder than the weekjust gone. This is bbc news, with tim willcox, the headlines at 16 00pm fresh warnings that the nhs under increasing pressure could soon be overwhelmed by coronavirus cases. The Health Secretary says people should all play their part in helping stop the spread. As tens of thousands of people over the age of 80 are invited to book vaccines, the government pledges that everyone over the age of 18 will be offered one by autumn. Rescue teams in indonesia have located the black box flight recorders for the boeing passenger plane that crashed into the sea shortly after tak eoff. 62 people were on board
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