Lost Mayan city found in Mexico jungle
American archaeologists have discovered an ancient Mayan city with thousands of structures, including pyramids, hidden in the Mexican jungle.
The discovery was made near the southern Mexican city of Campeche in Yucatan state.
Researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans have named the city Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.
They made the discovery using lidar technology, a method of scanning the land from above with lasers.
The technology allowed experts to analyse mapping data from about 50 square miles (129.5 square kilometres) of land.
The University's findings were published in the journal Antiquity, revealing a dense and varied network of previously unstudied Maya settlements.
“The larger of Valeriana’s two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital: multiple enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway, temple pyramids, a ballcourt, a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse) and a probable… architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD150," researchers wrote in the Antiquity.
Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at the university, said that the area where the ruins were discovered had been farmed for years.
"We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements," he said." We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years.
"The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”
He added: “Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability."
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Who were the Mayans?
The Mayans were a dominant civilisation in Mesoamerica (Central America) from 2000 BC to around 1697 AD.
They were known for their grand cities, such as Chichén Itzá in Mexico, elaborate pyramids, and the most advanced writing system in the Americas before European colonization.
Spanish colonists later conquered the Maya, with most of the population dying from European diseases.
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