Archaeologists employing laser-sensing technology have uncovered what may be an ancient Mayan city enveloped by dense jungle in southern Mexico, officials revealed on Wednesday.
The discovered city, christened Valeriana by researchers in homage to a nearby lagoon, may have rivaled the population density of the renowned pre-Hispanic metropolis Calakmul, situated in the southern Yucatan peninsula.
A study published this week in the journal Antiquity suggests that what appears to be unoccupied, jungle-covered areas between known Maya sites may have once been heavily populated regions. Adriana Velázquez Morlet from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and a co-author of the report, noted, “Previous research has shown that a large part of the present-day state of Campeche is a landscape that was transformed by its ancient inhabitants. Now, this study shows that a little-known region was a heavily urbanized landscape.”
The National Institute stated that approximately 6,479 structures have been identified in LiDAR images, spanning an area of about 47 square miles (122 square kilometers). This mapping technique uses thousands of laser pulses sent from an airplane to detect subtle variations in topography that are not evident to the naked eye.
These images disclosed a myriad of structures, including what appear to be temple platforms, ceremonial ball courts, housing platforms, agricultural terraces, and even a possible dam. It is suggested that the structures could date back to between 250 and 900 A.D., with the settlement potentially originating 100 years earlier.
The discovery was made by a consortium of researchers who used software to re-examine a 2013 LiDAR survey initially conducted to measure deforestation. During this re-analysis, Luke Auld-Thomas, then a graduate student at Tulane University, identified peculiar formations within the jungle survey.
Tulane professor Marcello Canuto, who advised Auld-Thomas, emphasized that the extensive data collected will “allow us to tell better stories of the ancient Mayan people,” merging established historical knowledge with new insights into how ancient civilizations were organized. “We have always been able to talk about the ancient Maya, especially in the lowland regions, because of their hieroglyphic texts, as they left such an interesting record. What we are now able to do is match that information with their settlements and populations, understanding what they contended over, governed, and traded,” he remarked.
While the LiDAR tool is highly valued, some features may still require ground verification, as pointed out by Susan D. Gillespie, an anthropology professor at the University of Florida who was not involved in the study. “They realize that small natural rock piles (chic in the local parlance) were likely misinterpreted as house mounds, being the same size and shape. Thus, they recognize that their feature counts are preliminary,” Gillespie explained.
“The final caveat, which I think must always be kept in mind, is the contemporaneity of the use of mapped features,” Gillespie added. “LiDAR maps what’s on the surface, but not when it was used. So, a large region might be dense with structures, but the extent of occupation at any one time cannot be known with aerial survey data alone.”
