Lost Maya City, Including Pyramids, Discovered in Mexico’s Jungle

Archaeologists utilizing an aged representation of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula person uncovered a mislaid Maya city, hidden until now, with thousands of buildings densely packed into a tiny area.

The archaeological squad utilized a lidar survey (shorthand for “light detection and ranging”, a staple of modern archaeological techniques) to place astir 7,000 antecedently undiscovered structures, including pyramids similar those recovered elsewhere successful Central America. The team’s research, detailing these findings, was published contiguous successful Antiquity.

Lidar surveys are precise utile successful Mesoamerican archaeology, wherever swaths of jungle tin rapidly swallow up full cities. Three years ago, a abstracted squad mapped 30,000 quadrate miles (78,000 quadrate kilometers) of Mexico, constituting astir 500 historical sites, and recovered that similar plan patterns were utilized for cities crossed the region.

Lidar tin adjacent shingle up archaeologists’ understandings of thoroughly researched sites; successful 2021, a lidar survey of Tikal, successful Guatemala, revealed an antecedently chartless vicinity analyzable connected the sprawling site.

A lidar representation of antecedently chartless Maya structures successful Mexico. Image: Auld-Thomas et al., Antiquity 2024

However, lidar is expensive. That’s wherever an aged representation comes into play—a 2013 lidar survey of the region, to beryllium specific, commissioned by a radical monitoring c reservoirs successful Mexico’s forests. The caller archaeological squad got entree to that data, redeeming them from a costly caller scan of the region. The squad interrogated the 2013 representation for grounds of antecedently undocumented Maya settlements, and recovered much than they bargained for: 6,674 antecedently chartless structures successful Campeche.

“Our investigation not lone revealed a representation of a portion that was dense with settlements, but it besides revealed a batch of variability,” said Luke Auld-Thomas, an archaeologist astatine Northern Arizona University and pb writer of the paper, successful an Antiquity property release. “We didn’t conscionable find agrarian areas and smaller settlements. We besides recovered a ample metropolis with pyramids close adjacent to the area’s lone highway, adjacent a municipality wherever radical person been actively farming among the ruins for years.”

The information lone covered a portion of astir 50 quadrate miles (129 quadrate kilometers), but the country was crammed with past architecture. The researchers besides managed to place circumstantial structures successful the lidar that made up the Mayan city, including a ballcourt and a dam. One architectural statement astatine 1 of the sites indicated a founding day earlier than 150 CE, according to a erstwhile study. That somewhat predates the Classic play of the Maya, which stretched from 250 CE to 900 CE.

“The authorities ne'er knew astir it; the technological assemblage ne'er knew astir it,” Auld-Thomas said. “That truly puts an exclamation constituent down the connection that, no, we person not recovered everything, and yes, there’s a batch much to beryllium discovered.”

In the paper, the squad noted that the caller information offered enactment to the antecedently stated interest that “archaeologically motivated lidar surveys person inflated estimates of determination colony density.”

“To the contrary, pseudorandom surveys—those combining expedient and random sampling—like this one, person established that anyone who is waiting for a sparsely settled Maya hinterland ample capable to offset the precocious colony densities documented by archaeological lidar surveys is moving retired of places to look,” the squad added. To enactment it simply: The dataset precocious utilized by the squad was not collected with an archaeological nonsubjective successful mind, but further supported erstwhile ideas astir Maya municipality sites and their density.

While lidar surveys are large for discovering sites and making conjectures astir the layout of cities, the aerial attack to archaeology cannot regenerate bully old-fashioned fieldwork. According to the Antiquity release, aboriginal probe volition absorption connected fieldwork astatine the sites. Given that determination are astir 7,000 structures successful the area, that probe could instrumentality immoderate time.