Here's How A PhD Student Discovered Long-Lost Maya City While Browsing Google

A long-lost huge Maya city, hidden under a jungle canopy in Mexico has been discovered after a PhD student was browsing Google. Anthropology doctoral student Luke Auld-Thomas at Tulane University was on the 16th page of a Google search when he found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring in the region which piqued his interest. Pairing up with his Professor Marcello A. Canuto, the duo have now published their research in the journal Antiquity which provides a better understanding of the ancient civilisation's extent and complexity.

"I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring," Auld-Thomas told BBC, referring to the Lidar survey of the region.

Auld-Thomas processed the Lidar survey data using methods employed by archaeologists and managed to uncover what others had missed - a city hiding in plain sight in the southern jungle of Campeche. The findings included evidence of more than 6,500 pre-Hispanic structures replete with the iconic stone pyramids which may have been home to 30,000-50,000 people.

"Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability," said Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US.

"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," he added

The lost city has been named Valerina after a nearby lagoon and dismantles the long-standing idea in Western thinking that the tropics were where the "civilisations went to die".

Also read | Ancient Mayan City With "Pyramid-Like Buildings" Found Deep In Mexican Forest

What is Lidar technology?

Lidar technology involves the use of 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 taken by the signal to return.

The particular technique has allowed scientists to scan large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab. The anomalies in the landscape often turn out to be pyramids, family houses and other examples of Maya infrastructure.

"Lidar is teaching us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of towns and communities over their tropical landscape," Canuto said.

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