A massive Maya landscape has been hiding under a forested area of southern Mexico.
The newfound city, dubbed Valeriana, spans an area roughly the size of Beijing and has “all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital,” researchers report in the October Antiquity. Its plazas connected by a large passageway, temple pyramids and water reservoir might have impressed Mayans over 1,500 years ago.
Archaeologists have long known that the Maya Lowlands, in the southernmost region of Mexico, harbors ancient urban settings (SN: 10/25/21). When archaeologist Luke Auld-Thomas, of Tulane University in New Orleans, was looking at random data online, he saw a dataset that Nature Conservancy Mexico (TNC
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