I also wonder how much ground disturbance was caused by previous decades of ground exploration. I know that paleontologists destroy a lot of information trying to get at what they have their search image set on at the time they do their abrassive work. The new non-invasive scanning techniques are the way to go in the future. I have personally been to Chichen itza in the Yucantan, Tikal in Guatemala and the Giza in Egypt but I have yet to see Copan in Honduras, Palenque in Mexico, the Aztec ruins near Mexico City or any of the Inca sites in Peru. The scale of what was built in the Americas is so much more extensive than that in Egypt and is simply amazing.
The question that this brings up in my mind immediately is: How badly was the environment damaged and how many species of wildlife were lost during the Mayan round of human over-population? I suppose we may never know. Still, there is an amazing diversity in that part of the world which obviously had to have sprung back after the colapse of the human population when it grew past the land's carrying capacity at their level of technology. The current boom cycle is certain to be much worse.
