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Archeology Student Accidentally Discovers Lost Mexican City via Google Search

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(Photo by Paolo Picciotto/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Archaeologists recently found an ancient Mayan city called Valeriana hidden deep within the dense jungle canopy of Campeche, Mexico – and it’s all thanks to a PhD student’s Google search.

Using an advanced laser scanning technology called Lidar, a team from Tulane University led by Luke Auld-Thomas mapped an area that had been mostly unexplored for centuries, as tends to happen in Mexico. The lidar scan revealed over 6,764 previously undiscovered structures, including pyramids, plazas, a reservoir, and areas for playing sports.

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Valeriana was enormous, estimated to have housed anywhere between 30,000 to 50,000 people at its height – around 750 to 850 A.D., give or take a decade or two.

A co-author of the research paper, Professor Marcello Canuto, explains this was not home to some tiny dying culture. Their findings contradict the idea that the Mayans lived in isolated villages, suggesting instead that Valeriana was a thriving, bustling urban center that, in today’s world, would probably be filled with a few dozen Starbucks.

A metropolis of its time, Valeriana could be compared to today’s major metro areas across the United States, where big, densely populated city centers are interconnected with smaller communities to make one giant community. It’s so big that it’s believed to be second in density only to Calakmul, which was previously thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America. And it was all discovered by accident.

Auld-Thomas stumbled upon Valeriana when he was “on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring.” It was a lidar survey. He processed the data using the same methods archaeologists would use.

The PhD student ended up finding something the original laser survey team had completely missed — a giant city that was once home to tens of thousands of ancient people.

The researchers theorize that this ancient Mayan civilization eventually faced a decline in part due to climate change, overpopulation, and war brought on by 16th-century Spanish invaders. In their research, published in the academic journal Antiquity, the researchers say there are likely far more ancient cities and structures to discover in the Mesoamerican region.