Laser Mapping Reveals Previously Unknown Maya City with Stone Pyramids in Mexico

Using a laser-based detection system, archaeologists have discovered over 6,500 pre-Hispanic structures — including a previously unknown Maya city named Valeriana — in Campeche, Mexico.

“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 doctoral student at Tulane University and instructor at Northern Arizona University.

“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.”

“The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it.”

“That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”

Lidar technology uses laser pulses to measure distances and to create 3D models of specific areas.

It has allowed the scientists to scan large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab, uncovering anomalies in the landscape that often prove to be pyramids, family houses and other examples Maya infrastructure.

“Because lidar allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail, that made us react, ‘Oh wow, there are so many buildings out there we didn’t know about, the population must have been huge’,” Auld-Thomas said.

“The counterargument was that lidar surveys were still too tethered to known, large sites, such as Tikal, and therefore had developed a distorted image of the Maya lowlands.”

“What if the rest of the Maya area was far more rural and what we had mapped so far was the exception instead of the rule?”

The team’s results provide compelling evidence of a more complex and varied Maya landscape than previously thought.

“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,” said Tulane University’s Professor Marcello Canuto.

“While some areas are replete with vast agricultural patches and dense populations, others have only small communities.”

“Nonetheless, we can now see how much the ancient Maya changed their environment to support a long-lived complex society.”

A paper on the findings was published on October 29, 2024 in the journal Antiquity.

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Luke Auld-Thomas et al. 2024. Running out of empty space: environmental lidar and the crowded ancient landscape of Campeche, Mexico. Antiquity 98 (401): 1340-1358; doi: 10.15184/aqy.2024.148