This is the story of how he did it. And how did Tulane University graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas find it? The answer lies in lasers. Until recently, archaeology was limited to what a researcher could observe from the ground and with their eyes.

Using cutting-edge laser mapping tech, archeologists have uncovered a lost Mayan city in the jungles of southern Mexico. As detailed in a new study published in the journal Antiquity, a team of scientists led by Tulane University PhD student Luke Auld-Thomas,

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.

A major Mayan urban center has been found in a recent lidar survey on the Yucatan Peninsula that includes pyramids and ball courts. The archaeologists triumphantly declare that the world is yet far away from the last major discovery under the jungles of Central America.

Who ever goes beyond page one of Google search results? Well, Luke Auld-Thomas did, and it led to the discovery of a lost city.

During a random Google search, a researcher stumbled on a laser survey done by a Mexican environmental organization. What it revealed was astonishing.

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,

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.