Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
A lucky graduate student from Arizona claims to have found the ruins of a hitherto undiscovered Mayan city in the jungles of southeastern Mexico. No bushwhacking was required.
Luke Auld-Thomas stumbled on the evidence in aerial imagery from a 2013 forestry survey of 122 square kilometres of rural Campeche state in the Yucatán peninsula.
The imagery was created with ground-penetrating radar that can peer through centuries of accumulated soil and sediment as well as forest canopies.
It revealed the outlines of more than 6,000 structures including houses, dams and sports arenas of which locals, government and the scientific community were all completely unaware (Auld-Thomas says) ’til now.
If this strains credulity, two points seem worth making. First, his use of “found” datasets rather than bespoke academic ones limits the risk of confirmation bias.
Second, Campeche is big. Conventional aerial photos show the jungle stretching undisturbed by humanity for vast distances – and about 11 centuries.
