New LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) surveys have stripped away the dense canopy of the Republic of the Congo to reveal a sprawling urban landscape dating to the mid-1st millennium BCE. The site features concentric defensive earthworks and over 1,500 individual house mounds, indicating a population density previously thought impossible for the region during the Iron Age.
Evidence of extensive iron smelting and slag heaps suggests this "Lost Capital" was a major industrial center that fueled the Bantu migrations. The discovery forces a total re-evaluation of the political complexity of pre-colonial Central African societies.