Thanks to satellite imagery and other modern tools, much of the world has been extensively mapped, but many secrets still lurk in the world’s most remote and inaccessible corners. A team of archaeologists has been rewarded for hiking nearly 60 kilometers (37 miles) through the dense jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico to discover a long-lost ancient Maya city with no previous record.

The new city was named Ocomtún, meaning “stone pillar”. The vast area includes plazas, great pyramid-style buildings, stone pillars and other structures arranged in concentric rings.

Of course, much of the city has been lost in time: the stone pillars may actually have been the entrances to the upstairs rooms, archaeologists say. There is also a ballroom for entertainment and possibly religious purposes. On the eve of the fieldwork, the researchers conducted a LIDAR scan of the entire area. The technology uses the reflection of laser beams to detect buildings that are not normally visible to trees and bushes.

“The biggest surprise was the site, located on a high peninsula surrounded by large wetlands,” says archaeologist and team leader Ivan Sprajc from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (via Google Translate). “The monumental core covers more than 50 hectares. [124 акров] and several large buildings, including several pyramidal structures over 15 meters high. [49 футів]”.

These rainforests are huge, with nearly 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles) of uninhabited forest in this part of the world, and little is known about what they hide until now. This is partly due to the thick leaves.

According to Spreitz et al., the city must have been an important local center for the Maya civilization between 250 and 1000 AD, known as the Classical Age. Analysis of pottery sherds found at the site will give researchers more information about when the site was inhabited.

For centuries the Maya people were the dominant civilization in Mesoamerica, what is now Central America and the southernmost part of North America. The Mayans are known for their achievements in architecture, culture, calendar systems, mathematics, and more.

The Mayan civilization suffered a major collapse in the 9th century AD, believed to be caused by a combination of civil war, drought, and other environmental factors. However, only in the 17th century was the last Maya city captured by Spanish invaders. Thanks to systems like LIDAR, we are discovering more and more Mayan settlements every day. Installing buildings in these settlements will require a lot of expertise and a lot of manual labor.

Archaeologists are also working on the ground to recover artifacts that will tell more about the people of this ancient civilization. These remaining pieces of life help determine the settlement dates of these regions. We can now add Ocomtún to the thousands of Mayan sites we know. We’re sure we’ll hear more about this place in the future as more research is done in the area and what remains to be analyzed. Source