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.

A city with temple pyramids not far from the road and a site with a Maya complex built alongside a sinkhole lend to evidence that the Maya civilization was even more sprawling than known.

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

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,

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.