The ants who built this particular colony moved out 40 tons of earth in the process of construction, with each worker carrying three times his own weight in soil on each trip. According to the video, it is the ant equivalent of building the Great Wall.
What was revealed is astounding. A vast complex city-state with tubular roads and air vents and bulbous extensions, it looks space age in the contained environment manner of Charles De Gaul International airport with its connected travel tubes and pods. It calls to mind Frank Herbert’s Dune with its underground drug mining society and giant worms. These are the Invisible Cities that Italo Calvino didn’t write about.
That there are such states below our feet, and that they are far more complex than the architectural and structural archaeological remains of many human sites, inspires awe. The Maya inscribed their sculptures on their bottoms, acknowledging the gods beneath the surface, the divinity of earth. As archaeologists, we are drawn to the hidden; we must remember to be open to that which we least expect.