Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of previously unknown ancient Maya structures including a large city with pyramids.
The discovery has shocked experts as neither the Mexican government or the scientific community were aware of these ancient structures.
These structures, more than 6,600 buildings, were identified in a study and were found close to modern settlements and the area’s only highway.
The huge Maya city, which may have been home to 30,000 to 50,000 people at its peak dating between 750 to 850 AD, and its structures were unearthed after they disappeared under thick jungle moss in Mexico.
Alongside the city and its structures, archaeologists also discovered pyramids, connecting causeways districts, sports fields and amphitheatres.
According to research published in the journal Antiquity, a remote sensing technique known as LiDAR or light detection was used in order to uncover parts of the Campeche state, a corner of the Maya world.
These techniques involve a remote sensing method which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane with researchers then mapping objects below using the time the signal takes to return.
The study found that these discoveries reveal a “populous and urban ancient Maya landscape”.
The discovery also strongly suggests that far more evidence of urbanism could also be hidden in the central Maya Lowlands which ecompasses parts of present-day Guatemala, the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo and Belize.
Lead study author, Luke Auld-Thomas of Northern Arizona University, said in a press release: “Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability.”
He added: “We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements. 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; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”
The Maya civilization peaked between 250 and 900 AD and was a complex society that flourished in the tropical lowlands of what is now Central America and Mexico.
The civilizations were highly regarded for their progressive way of thinking and were skilled at writing using hieroglyphs, mathematics and architecture as well as being skilled astronomers and artists.
Most of the Maya civilisations’ great cities were abandoned by AD900 with the reason for their decline still baffling experts today.
The latest study highlights “the fact that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the existence or absence of large sites within as-yet unmapped areas of the Maya Lowlands,” noted the research authors.
The experts concluded that “cities and dense settlements are simply ubiquitous across large swaths of the central Maya Lowlands.”
