Research carried out over the last decades on the former territory of the Central Maya Lowlandsa region located in the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula and encompassing part of present-day Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo, allowed us to reveal the complex urban planning and centralized administration developed by the pre-Hispanic era. civilization a few years ago. However, in this area there were still huge virgin sites to be studied with archaeological methods, such as Campeche.
Aerial remote sensing tools have now filled this gap, revealing a big surprise: over an area of about 130 square kilometers, they are hidden under jungle and vegetation at least. 6,674 unknown Mayan structures. Some of them, according to Luke Auld-Thomas, researcher at Northern Arizona University (United States), are vestiges of a big city inhabited around 1,500 years ago, it had emblematic stone pyramids like those of Chichén Itzá or Tikal.
“Our analysis not only revealed the picture of a region full of coloniesbut also a lot of variability”, explains Auld-Thomas, lead author of an article published this Tuesday in the journal Antiquity with researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico and the universities of Tulane and Houston. “Not only did we find rural areas and smaller towns. We also found a large town with pyramids right next to the only road in the area, near a town where people have been cultivating their land for years among the ruins Neither the government nor the community scientists knew this and confirm that. there is much left to discover“.
Ancient structures identified in the Campeche region.
They gave the name of the great unknown city Valerian based on a nearby lake and have been documented monumental enclosures which characterize the Maya “political capitals” of the Classic period (200-900 AD): pyramids, enclosed squares connected by a wide road, a field for the famous ball game, a reservoir and Group E, an enclosure ceremonial with a pyramid in its western part and an elongated platform to the east. Beyond the center, terraces and houses have been identified which dot the landscape, suggesting dense urban planning.
These discoveries were recorded through the study of images obtained using LiDAR, an expensive laser detection and localization technology that is revolutionizing the discovery of ancient sites around the world. No new investigation was carried out, but rather the images obtained in 2013 by a team of environmental scientists who aimed to measure and monitor carbon in Mexico’s forests. Auld-Thomas stumbled upon this data and began studying it, revealing a dense and varied network of Mayan settlements spread throughout the region.
Now all these hypotheses must be confirmed on site. “You can learn a lot from a map, but not how things change over time. As we map larger areas, we must go into the field and study the structures individuals and objects recovered. Being on the ground and having an idea of when buildings were constructed and occupied helps us understand how these settlements evolved over time,” explains the researcher, who believes that there is still “much more to discover ” in the lowlands. Mayans.
“Given the environmental and social challenges we face due to rapid population growth, the study of ancient cities can only help and broaden our vision of what urban life can be,” reflects Auld- Thomas. “Having a broader sample of the human race, a longer record of the remains of people’s lives, could give us the freedom to imagine better, more sustainable ways of being urban, now and in the future. future.”
