How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away
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.
Scientists Have Discovered a “Lost” Mayan Megacity, Complete With Hidden Pyramids
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.
Major Lost Maya City Discovered While Searching Google
Thomas used LiDAR data related to carbon monitoring to discover a lost Maya city.Auld-Thomas’ work helped locate an estimated 6,600 buildings only 15 minutes from a current major road. The city had two major centers and included temple pyramids,
Hidden Maya city discovered in Mexico jungle by doctoral student: "There's a lot more to be discovered"
The ancient Maya city was named "Valeriana" after a nearby freshwater lagoon and built before 150 AD, researchers said.
Have We Discovered All the Mayan Cities? Newly-Found Metropolis with Pyramids Shows We’re Not Even Close
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.
Lost Mayan City Discovered Using 'Found' Laser Imaging Data
During a random Google search, a researcher stumbled on a laser survey done by a Mexican environmental organization. What it revealed was astonishing.
Student discovers lost Mayan city in the jungle by accident
Luke Auld-Thomas, Ph.D. candidate in Archeology at Tulane University, made the discovery while in a small team in the southeastern state of Campeche, Mexico. He and the archeologists found pyramids, sports fields causeways connecting districts and amphitheaters in the ancient Maya city, which they took to naming Valeriana.
Thousands of lost Maya structures discovered in Mexico: We’ve only scratched the surface
Recent research using advanced lidar technology has uncovered 6,674 previously unknown Maya structures in an unexplored part of Campeche, Mexico, suggesting that we have not yet come close to finding all the major Maya cities.
In Mexico, Archaeologists Spot a Maya City Behind a Wall of Trees
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,
Lost Maya city discovered in Mexico
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.
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Lasers reveal Maya city, including thousands of structures, hidden in Mexico
The new city, dubbed Valeriana, was a dense urban settlement with temple pyramids and a ball court. Laser surveys have ...
Have we found all the major Maya cities? Not even close, new research suggests
Archaeologists have analyzed lidar data from a completely unstudied corner of the Maya world in Campeche, Mexico, revealing 6 ...
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Lost Maya Metropolis Hidden By Thick Jungle Uncovered by Laser Mapping and a Lucky Google Search
Auld-Thomas saw an opportunity and decided to take a shot. He and his colleagues from Tulane University and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History re-processed the 2013 lidar data ...
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Ancient Mayan city discovered via page 16 of Google search results
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Luke Auld-Thomas, a Ph.D. student at Tulane University in ...
Scientists detect traces of an ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico using laser-sensor technology
The technique, using thousands of laser pulses sent from a plane, can detect variations in topography that are not evident to the naked eye.