In an exciting archaeological breakthrough, researchers have uncovered a lost Maya city in the dense jungles of Campeche, Mexico, featuring remarkable temple pyramids, enclosed plazas, and a reservoir. This hidden treasure, long obscured by the tropical landscape, has been revealed through advanced laser mapping technology, marking a significant milestone in Maya studies.
The discovery stemmed from the innovative application of Light Detection and Ranging (lidar), a remote sensing technique that employs pulsed laser beams to create three-dimensional maps of the Earth’s surface. Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, spearheaded the initiative, pondering how lidar could be harnessed to illuminate the mysteries of the ancient Maya civilization.
“For the longest time, our sample of the Maya civilization was a couple of hundred square kilometers total,” Auld-Thomas explained. “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.”
While aware of lidar’s potential, Auld-Thomas also recognized its high costs, which often deter funders from investing in areas lacking visible Maya traces. However, a pivotal moment arrived when he discovered that a detailed lidar survey had already been conducted in 2013 as part of a forest monitoring project, covering 122 square kilometers of the region.
Collaboration And Analysis
Teaming up with researchers from Tulane University, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and the University of Houston’s National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, Auld-Thomas embarked on a comprehensive analysis of the existing lidar data. This collaborative effort focused on exploring 50 square miles of Campeche that had previously evaded archaeological scrutiny.
The findings were nothing short of astounding. The team identified a dense network of uncharted Maya settlements, culminating in the discovery of an entire city they named Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.
Valeriana: A Classic Maya Political Capital
The researchers detailed that Valeriana’s larger precinct exhibits the classic features of a Maya political capital. This includes multiple enclosed plazas interconnected by a broad causeway, temple pyramids, a ballcourt, and a reservoir formed by damming a seasonal watercourse, known as an arroyo. Notably, the architectural layout suggests a founding date prior to AD 150, a significant insight into the city’s historical timeline.
“The larger of Valeriana’s two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital,” the researchers stated in their study published in the journal Antiquity.
Implications For Future Research
Auld-Thomas emphasized the broader implications of their findings, indicating that this discovery underscores the vast, uncharted treasures that may still lie hidden in the region. “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, and the scientific community never knew about it.”
The research team plans to follow up their lidar analysis with fieldwork at these newly identified sites, which could offer invaluable insights as modern society grapples with rapid urbanization and environmental challenges.
Auld-Thomas further highlighted the importance of studying ancient cities, noting, “The ancient world is full of examples of cities that are completely different than the cities we have today. Given the environmental and social challenges we’re facing from rapid population growth, it can only help to study ancient cities and expand our view of what urban living can look like.”
This recent discovery echoes a similar lidar breakthrough from six years ago, when researchers uncovered tens of thousands of previously undetected Maya structures in Guatemala’s Petén region. These findings suggested that millions more people may have lived in the area than previously thought, including extensive agricultural fields and irrigation canals essential for supporting a large population.
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