Archaeology student discovers a lost Mayan City while on page 16 of a Google search

Sometimes, extraordinary discoveries happen by sheer accident. Such was the case when Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student from Tulane University, stumbled upon an ancient Mayan city while deep in Google search results. He told the BBC that he had reached “something like page 16” of his search when he uncovered a laser survey from a Mexican organization conducting environmental monitoring. This led to the rediscovery of an ancient Mayan urban center, believed to have been hidden for centuries beneath dense forest cover.

"I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring," Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US, told the network. It is believed that the city disappeared centuries ago before being rediscovered by accident. Archaeologists have reportedly uncovered structures such as pyramids, causeways, sports fields, and amphitheaters in the southeastern state of Campeche. The hidden city, now named Valeriana, was located using Lidar, a method that employs laser mapping to detect cities obscured by trees and vegetation. The team identified three sites, each comparable in size to Scotland's capital, Edinburgh. The city is thought to have had a population of 30,000 to 50,000 people between 750 AD and 850 AD.

Professor Marcello Canuto, a co-author of the research, expressed that the discovery would challenge the Western notion that the tropics were a region where civilization went to die. Aud-Thomas and a fellow archaeologist named the city Valeriana after a lagoon near the settlement. Researchers believe the city was a significant cultural center before it was lost. Although they have not determined the exact cause of the city's decline, they pointed out that climate change could have been a key factor. The city may have served as a capital, given its density, which ranks second only to the Calakmul site, located 100 kilometers away, among all Mayan sites in Latin America.

Canuto, an anthropology professor at Tulane University, told NBC News, "The growing consensus is that climate variability was a major factor causing stresses, adaptations and reactions, leading to more systemic unrest." The professor shared that there are no images of the lost city apart from the ones taken by Lidar, which Canuto believes is equivalent to digital deforestation. According to Canuto, there are no known images of the lost city, only LiDAR maps, because no one has visited the site alongside local residents. While this study is the first to uncover Maya structures in east-central Campeche, he noted that archaeologists are discovering that areas with layers of human activity are more prevalent than previously believed.

The professor highlighted the need for more field research alongside better mapping of the area through drones. "It would be wonderful over the next 10, 20 years. We should have double the amount of ground covered in Lidar," Canuto remarked. Auld-Thomas and Professor Canuto surveyed three jungle sites and identified over 6,674 buildings in total, according to BBC. "The point is that the landscape is definitely settled - that is, settled in the past - and not, as it appears to the naked eye, uninhabited or 'wild,'" emphasized Professor Elizabeth Graham from University College London regarding the discovery.