Anthropologists peered into the thick jungles of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and identified a long-lost Mayan city with stepped temple pyramids that rivaled Chichen Itza, Rio Bec and Tikal. Archaeologists have yet to conduct field research at the site, but based on remote sensing data that maps the entire landscape beneath the dense forest in minute detail, it appears that this lush forest was once home to the Maya.
The recently announced city called Valeriana has a crowded urban landscape and rural slums that surpass all known Mayan cities located in Belize or Guatemala. Researchers from the United States and Mexico counted at least 6,764 structures hiding under the canopy that had never been examined before.
Since the 1940s, scholars have known that parts of the Yucatan Peninsula, including the modern states of Campeche and Quintana Roo, were once densely populated and extensively built by the Mayans between AD 250 and 900. But compared with other parts of the peninsula, the eastern forests of Campeche and the western foothills of Quintana Roo are “essentially terra incognita” in the authoritative database, the scientists said. Meanwhile, local residents have known for a long time that there are ruins here.
“We just couldn’t find rural areas and smaller communities,” says Luke Old-Thomas of Tulane University and Northern Arizona University in the US. “We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the only highway in the area, near a city where people had been actively farming for years. “The government was never aware of this; The scientific community never knew this. “It really puts an exclamation point behind the statement no, we haven’t found them all, and yes, there is a lot to discover.”
The first block of Mayan ruins mapped by Old Thomas and his colleagues were found south and east of Rio Bec, a pre-Columbian Maya site famous for temple pyramids built in a unique architectural style.
There are two paired pyramids at the new site, and the pattern of ruins resembles the “intensive rural” agricultural settlement of Rio Bec. The second block of Mayan ruins appears to be the epicenter of a large urban area. The city of Valeriana has a freshwater lagoon and two main monumental architectural centers connected by a dense settlement.
Anthropologists explain that one of these centers had “all the hallmarks of a classic Mayan political capital,” including temple pyramids, a ball court, a seasonal waterway, multiple covered plazas, and a dam connecting them. In total, the infrastructure covers every centimeter of the survey area, which is approximately 16.6 kilometers (6.4 miles) square. Field walls and agricultural terraces are common everywhere.
“Valeriana’s discovery underscores the fact that there are still large gaps in our knowledge about the presence or absence of large areas in as yet uncharted regions of the Maya Lowlands,” the team wrote.
The third and last block is completely different. It is sparse and consists only of scattered or loosely clustered dwellings, with no monuments or reservoirs visible with Lidar.
However, some experts claim that Lidar technology makes Yucatan look more densely populated than it actually is. Today, there is much debate about whether the major Mayan sites were truly cities with large populations, or simply places where the elite could relax and feel special.
But based on this new finding, Thomas the Elder and his colleagues say they can “conclude that cities and settlements were ubiquitous across large areas of the central Maya lowlands.”
“Anyone waiting for the sparsely populated Mayan interior… will not,” they add. The study was published on: antiquity.
Source: Port Altele
