Unveiling the Hidden Jungle: The Astonishing Discovery of a Lost Mayan City in Mexico’s Depths

A huge Mayan city in the middle of the forest in southeastern Mexico was discovered by accident by a doctoral student at Tulane University. The site was home to up to 50,000 people at its peak, from 750 AD to 850 AD More than 6,700 buildings of various sizes have been discovered

State Agency

The great Maya city was discovered by accident in the middle of the forest in the state of Campeche, in southeastern Mexico. Luke Auld-Thomas, a doctoral candidate at Tulane Universityin the USA, was looking for data on the internet when he found a laser survey of the site, carried out by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring.

By processing the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others did not: a huge ancient Maya city. The information comes from BBC.

According to the British broadcaster, the survey discovered by Luke was a study of Lidar, a remote sensing technique that shoots thousands of laser pulses from an aircraft and maps objects below using the time it takes to’ r return signal. Researchers believe the city could have been home to 30,000 to 50,000 people at its peak, from 750 AD to 850 AD – that’s more than the number of people living in the region today.

Luke Auld-Thomas and the rest of the team named the town Valeriana, after a nearby lagoon. The team discovered three sites in total, in a survey area the size of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

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Professor Marcello Canuto, co-author of the research, published in the academic journal Antiquity, told the BBC that the discovery helps change the idea that the tropics were where “civilizations went to die” – it say that this part of the world was actually home to rich and complex cultures.

‘Hiding in plain sight’

The researchers found 6,764 buildings of various sizes on the three sites. YR BBC states that Valeriana has “the characteristics of a capital city” and in terms of building density, it is only second to the site of Calakmul, about 100 km away. Archaeologists found houses, pavements, squares with temple pyramids, amphitheatres, a court where people played an ancient ball game and evidence of a reservoir.

According to researchers, the ancient Maya city would be “hidden in plain sight” as it is only a 15-minute walk from a main road near Xpujil. Research suggests that the Maya city-states were eliminated, among other reasons, because they were very populous and unable to survive climate problems, as well as other problems, such as war and the conquest of the region by Spanish invaders in the 16th century.

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