True, it doesn't. I didn't read the question carefully enough. Path-tracing is indeed a more sophisticated form of ray-tracing. In a path-tracing engine you'll still be calculating intersections to surfaces by ray-casting, ray-marching etc.
As the wikipedia page for ray-tracing states, "ray tracing is a rendering technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects". The range of complexity possible in that definition was already discussed in the above Quora article.
>Our understanding of Maya language and culture has been rewritten over the past 50 years, thanks to the leadership of an art teacher, Linda Schele, who found that hundreds of years of "accepted archaeology wisdom" was incomplete.
Says who?
>She was invited by NASA to speak at a symposium about alien civilizations.
Source?
Do you want me to buy a book too?
Edit: OK, the way you wrote your post got my skepticism alarm blaring. I was thinking you were talking about some ancient aliens insanity, but that wasn't your point at all. I apologize for the confrontational post.