This is how a PhD student discovered a long-lost Mayan city while browsing Google

A huge Mayan city has been discovered

A long-lost massive Mayan city hidden under a jungle canopy in Mexico was discovered after a PhD student was surfing Google. Anthropology graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas at Tulane University found himself on page 16 of a Google search when he found a laser survey conducted by a Mexican environmental monitoring organization in the region that piqued his interest. The duo, working with their professor Marcello A. Canuto, have now published their research in the journal Antique providing a better understanding of the scope and complexity of ancient civilization.

“I was on page 16 of a Google search and found a laser survey conducted by a Mexican environmental monitoring organization,” Auld-Thomas said BBCciting a lidar study of the region.

Auld-Thomas processed the Lidar survey data using methods used by archaeologists and managed to discover what others had missed – a city hidden in plain sight in the southern jungle of Campeche. The discoveries included evidence of more than 6,500 pre-Hispanic structures containing iconic stone pyramids that may have housed 30,000–50,000 people.

“Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a densely populated region, but also revealed high variability,” said Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US.

“What we didn’t find was just rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the only highway in the area, close to a city where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,” he added.

The lost city was named Valerina after a nearby lagoon, disproving the well-established idea in Western thinking that “civilizations are dying” in the tropics.

Read also | Ancient Mayan city with “pyramid-like buildings” found deep in a Mexican forest

What is Lidar technology?

Lidar technology uses a remote sensing technique in which thousands of laser pulses are fired from a plane to create three-dimensional models of specific areas based on the time it takes for the signal to return.

This particular technique allowed scientists to scan large swathes of land from the comfort of a computer lab. Anomalies in the landscape often turn out to be pyramids, family houses and other examples of Mayan infrastructure.

“Lidar teaches us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of cities and communities across their tropical landscape,” Canuto said.

Notably, the Maya civilization spanned southeastern Mexico and parts of Central America and was known for its advanced mathematical calendars. Widespread political decline led to its decline centuries before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, whose military campaigns led to the fall of its last stronghold in the late 17th century