- The researchers were monitoring the level of carbon in the forests when they made the discovery
A team of archaeologists has discovered more than 6,000 ancient Mayan structures hidden by vegetation in southeastern Mexico, including a city with pyramids they named Valeriana.
According to a published study in the magazine Antiquity On October 29, structures hitherto unknown to Mexican authorities and the scientific community are located near modern settlements.
The discovery occurred from the analysis of data obtained in 2013 with the laser detection technique called Lidar applied in the area under study, located in the city of Campeche.
The authors of the investigation detailed that they discovered the surface, of about 130 square kilometers, “by accident” and found an ancient urban and populated Mayan landscape hidden by the vegetation.
“Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but also revealed a lot of variability,” said the study’s lead author, Luke Auld-Thomas.
Details of the discovered Mayan city
Researchers reveal that Valeriana may be the main Mayan archaeological site due to the number of structures after Calakmul, which is considered the largest in Latin America.
The Campeche area where the study was conducted is characterized by tropical forests, limestone plains and seasonal wetlands and was a nerve center of the ancient Mayan civilization, particularly during the Classic Period (250 to 900 AD).
“Not only did we find rural areas and smaller settlements, we also found a large city with pyramids right next to the only road in the area, near a village where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,” Auld noted. Thomas.
The researcher indicated that there is still much left to discover in the so-called central Mayan Lowlands, a region in the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, which encompasses parts of Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo.
How was the discovery?
The team analyzed Lidar data collected in 2013 by a group of Mexican environmental scientists for a different purpose: measuring and monitoring carbon in Mexico’s forests.
“Scientists in ecology, forestry and civil engineering have been using Lidar surveys to study some of these areas with totally different objectives,” Auld-Thomas said.
Lidar is a remote sensing technique that fires thousands of laser pulses from an aircraft and maps objects below using the time it takes for the signal to return.
But when Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what other researchers had missed. It was the enormous ancient city that is estimated to have housed between 30,000 and 50,000 people at its peak, between 750 and 850 AD. c.
The study highlighted that, in recent years, Lidar has become a powerful tool in archaeologists’ arsenal, because it is capable of documenting entire landscapes in minute detail even under dense forest cover.
With information from EFE
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