“Indications of a Mayan capital.” A lost city has been discovered in the jungles of Mexico

Archaeologists have unearthed an abandoned settlement of the Mayan civilization, previously unknown. Remarkably, the discovery occurred not through conventional digs, but via computer analysis in a laboratory setting. Furthermore, it was not renowned scientists who made the find, but rather students, and it happened serendipitously.

The city was named Valeriana

Luke Old-Thomas, a graduate student in archaeology at Northern Arizona University, utilized lidar technology to analyze terrain surveys. Lidar, essentially a laser-based locator, is instrumental in forestry, construction, and ecological research. It enables the creation of digital terrain models and uncovers details obscured by dense vegetation.

Old-Thomas examined a 122-square-kilometer survey from a 2013 forest carbon project in Campeche, Mexico. By applying archaeological techniques to the data, he identified building outlines, prompting collaboration with experts from Tulane University, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and the University of Houston’s National Center for Laser Mapping. This interdisciplinary team unearthed a vast Mayan city concealed within the Mexican jungle, complete with pyramids, sports arenas, and amphitheaters.

The investigation uncovered over 6,500 structures, now in ruins and largely subterranean. The newly discovered city was christened “Valeriana,” inspired by a nearby freshwater lagoon.

For centuries it was ignored

The larger of the two monumental sections of Valeriana exhibits the defining features of a classic

Maya political capital: multiple enclosed plazas linked by a broad causeway, temple pyramids, a ball court, a reservoir created by damming a seasonal watercourse, and a sacred complex of buildings arranged in a manner typical of Maya culture, according to the researchers’ paper in the journal Antiquity. They suggest that the complex served for rituals and astronomical observations, and its characteristics imply that the city was established before the common era.

Beyond the central settlement, the hillside is scattered with terraces and houses, reflecting intense development during the city’s growth phase. Archaeologists estimate Valeriana to be around 2,000 years old, with a population of about 50,000 people between 750 and 850 AD. The unearthed city lies adjacent to the area’s sole highway, close to contemporary settlements, and for centuries, locals unknowingly farmed crops amidst the ruins.

The research team intends to further scrutinize the lidar images in anticipation of additional findings.

Luke Old-Thomas remarks, “The ancient world is replete with cities that diverged significantly from those of today, encompassing vast agricultural expanses with dense construction, cities that championed egalitarianism, and others that were sharply divided socially.”

The same method was used to find 60 thousand Mayan buildings

A few years back, archaeologists applied the same scientific method to explore the jungles of Guatemala and discovered thousands of Mayan settlements.

Ancient Indian sites, hidden for nearly two millennia in dense tropical forests, were revealed through the tree canopies with the help of aerial lidar photography. The landscape analysis indicated that these sites were part of a large, interconnected urban sprawl, covering an area of 1,700 square kilometers.

Lidar has been especially valuable in surveying the inaccessible regions of the jungle, like the Mirador Calakmul karst basin. Scans there uncovered 60,000 previously unknown Mayan structures. In this region alone, researchers have identified 964 ancient settlements. These communities were linked by an intricate system of roads and causeways, spanning over 177 kilometers in total.