Student accidentally discovers ancient Mayan city that has been lost for 1,170 years
A student has accidentally uncovered an ancient Mayan city that has been lost for 1,170 years.
The ruins, which were hidden under a jungle, were missed by archeologists searching in the area.
However, one student made a huge discovery by accident when searching through Google.
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Luke Auld-Thomas is a PhD student from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, who stumbled upon the major find while looking through data about archeological research in the area online.
He explained: “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring.”
Examining the survey, Auld-Thomas noticed something that had previously been missed.
There was a huge ancient city that had flown under the radar for centuries.
Now named Valeriana after a nearby lagoon, the city was home to around 30,000 to 50,000 people in its heyday from 750 CE to 850 CE.
A total of three sites were uncovered, which are about the same size as the city of Edinburgh in Scotland.
According to Professor Marcello Canuto, who is a co-author of the research, the discovery of these sites helps to change the idea that the tropics were where ‘civilizations went to die’.
The ancient city boasted two plazas with temple pyramids which is where Mayans would have gone to worship and to bury their dead.
There was also a court where locals would have played ball games.
Despite the fact that the ancient city went unnoticed for centuries, it was hidden in plain sight, just a 15 minute hike from a major road near Xpujil.
The research done in the area has suggested that Mayan civilizations started to collapse from around 800 CE, in part because of their dense populations and inability to survive climate issues.
Auld-Thomas said: “It's suggesting that the landscape was just completely full of people at the onset of drought conditions and it didn't have a lot of flexibility left. And so maybe the entire system basically unraveled as people moved farther away.”
The student went on to say: “I've got to go to Valeriana at some point. It's so close to the road, how could you not? But I can't say we will do a project there.
“One of the downsides of discovering lots of new Mayan cities in the era of Lidar (laser survey) is that there are more of them than we can ever hope to study.”