Tulane researchers uncovered over 6,500 Maya structures in Mexico using lidar, revealing a complex settlement landscape and challenging previous assumptions about the Maya civilization’s urban and rural distribution.

Archaeologists have found thousands of Maya structures and a lost city they named Valeriana in Mexico by using laser mapping technology, according to a new study.

Drone lidar technology discovered the lost Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan as ancient trade hubs high in the mountains.

Just last year, for example, archaeologists found another lost city they named ‘Ocomtún (translating to ‘stone column’ in Maya), after experts from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) at the University of Houston flew a plane over sites of interest.

East of the town of Dos Lagunas, past the major highway cutting through Mexico’s south, the forest rises up in a dense wall of grasping roots, spindly branches and veils of brown and green. Beyond it lies the ruins of an old Maya city,

WIRED spoke with the researchers responsible for the discovery of Valeriana, a lost Maya city in the middle of the jungle of Campeche.