Thousands of Maya Structures, Including Lost City, Revealed in Mexico

Archaeologists analyzing lidar data from over the remote forests of Campeche, Mexico, have discovered a profusion of previously unknown Maya structures, including pyramids, residential complexes, and even an entire city. The conclusion is, we are nowhere near finding all the major  Maya cities.

The findings, published in Antiquity, reveal a complex network of Maya civilization in a region that had, until now, been a practically a blank spot on archaeologists’ maps. This breakthrough challenges previous estimates of Maya urban density and suggests that much more of the Maya world remains hidden beneath Mexico’s dense tropical forests.

“For the longest time, our sample of the Maya civilization was a couple of hundred square kilometers total,” explained Luke Auld-Thomas, lead author and researcher at Northern Arizona University.

“That sample was hard-won by archaeologists who painstakingly walked over every square meter, hacking away at the vegetation with machetes, to see if they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone’s home 1,500 years ago.”