48 AI agents scanned NASA lidar overnight and flagged a hidden Maya site. The twist: archaeologists had already mapped it
Pietro Miotti, who works in research at Google and says he is not an archaeologist, asked a mix of agents (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude and Grok) where to look for hidden ruins, then had them turn about 1,200 km² of public NASA lidar strips of Mexico into images. By his account, 48 agents went through them tile by tile with a written guide, flagged a hilltop with a levelled plaza and a possible pyramid, checked the literature, drafted a report in Spanish, and Mexico's INAH replied that no registered site existed at that spot, all within about 72 hours. In a November 11 update on his blog he says the site had in fact already been mapped in a 2025 study (Estrada-Belli et al.), so the agents rediscovered it rather than discovered it.
Why it matters
It shows ordinary agents with no special model can do patient, large-scale visual survey work on public data, and the correction is just as useful: agents can miss existing literature, so a human expert check still matters.
Who it's for
Researchers, students and curious builders who want to try agents on public scientific datasets, and anyone following what agent swarms can do outside coding.
How to try it
- Read the full diary and correction at pietromiotti.com/latest/maya-site/ before repeating the claim.
- Pick a public dataset and write a precise guide for the agents (what to flag, what to ignore), as he did for pyramids, plazas, hills and sinkholes.
- Split the data into tiles so many agents can review it in parallel, then have one agent cross-check hits against published papers and official registers.
- Send anything promising to the relevant experts or authority instead of publishing locations yourself.
Plan & availability: Applies to: anyone with agent tools and public data. The NASA lidar he used is public; he used general-purpose agents with no custom classifier. No field check has been done; under Mexican law any fieldwork needs INAH authorisation. Based on the author's X post and blog, read on November 11, 2026.
Note: this is the author's own account on X and his blog; we haven't independently confirmed the details.
Source: @PietroMiotti on X ↗
Written by AgentStackList from the original post. Checked Nov 11, 2026. Features, plans and availability can change, so confirm on the source before you rely on it.
agent-swarmlidararchaeologyresearchviral
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