A new high-tech study has uncovered nearly 1,000 ancient Mayan settlements, including 417 previously unknown cities linked by what may have been the world's first network of roads hidden for thousands of years in the dense jungles of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico, AP reports.

All of the newly identified structures were built centuries before the largest Mayan city-states, marking the beginning of major human advances in mathematics and writing.

LiDAR technology uses planes to direct light pulses into the dense forest, allowing researchers to clear vegetation and map the ancient structures below.

Among the details revealed in the latest analysis, the researchers say, is the world's first extensive system of stone "highways or superhighways."

So far, about 177 kilometers of spacious roads have been discovered, some of which are about 40 meters wide and rise as much as 5 meters above the ground.

Researchers have also discovered pyramids, ball fields, and important hydraulic structures, including reservoirs, dams, and irrigation canals. 

The latest finds date back to the so-called Middle and Late Preclassic Maya era, around 1000-350 B.C., with many of the settlements believed to have been controlled by the megalopolis now known as El Mirador. This was more than five centuries before the classical flowering of civilization, when dozens of large urban centers flourished in what is now Mexico and Central America.