'They're the world's first superhighway system.'
Known as sacbes, meaning "white roads," these causeways rose above the tangled and sometimes swampy grounds of the forests. In their prime, sacbes were enameled in a layer of white plaster that helped the underlying mix of mud mortar and carefully quarried stone appear more visible in moonlight.
Marcello Canuto, an anthropology professor at Tulane University whose work was cited in the study, toldthat constructing the sacbes "were efforts that involve a lot of people, a lot of labor and coordination." According to the study, such advanced infrastructure entails a homogenous "power to organize thousands of workers," ranging from "lime producers, mortar and quarry specialists, lithic technicians, architects, logistics and agricultural procurement specialists, and legal enforcement and religious officials."
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