Here’s what you’ll learn from reading this story:
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Researchers recently spotted an ancient Maya city using LiDAR. It is located in the Balamakú ecological reserve on the western side of the Yucatan Peninsula.
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Further investigation on the ground revealed a range of complex structures in an area that were largely unknown to researchers.
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The range of buildings discovered lends credence to the idea that this city may have played a major role in the region.
The jungles of the Balamakú ecological reserve in the Yucatan Peninsula have recently offered a remarkable glimpse of an ancient Maya city, one likely to be regionally prominent. Although it is more than 1,000 years old, this city was not known until the modern age. Its rediscovery comes thanks to airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) and subsequent archeology on the ground.
Stuck some 37 miles deep in the jungle, a research team—led by Ivan Ṡprajc, an archeology professor from Slovenia who has been leading work on the Yucatan Peninsula since 1996—took aerial scanning information to discover the true location of a 1,000-year-old Maya city complete with complex buildings, ball plazas, and even a site.
Highlighted by several pyramidal structures over 50 feet tall, the city is perched on a peninsula of high land surrounded by extensive wetlands. The 123-acre site includes three plazas containing “imposing buildings and surrounded by several patio groups,” according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the group working to explore the densely vegetated reserve in the state of Campeche.
“Between the two main squares there is a complex made up of several low and elongated structures, arranged almost in concentric circles” says Ṡprajc in a statement translated from Spanish. “A ball game is also included.”
A causeway connects the south-east complex with the north-west part, where most of the construction rests. It is highlighted by a pyramid that rises 82 feet above the natural terrain.
The researchers named the newly discovered city Ocomtún, “stone column” in Yucatec Maya. The multiple cylindrical columns discovered probably served as entrances to the upper rooms of the building.
As the team searched the site, they continued to locate structures leading to the La Rigueña River that included steps, monolithic columns, and central altars. The team also discovered an area for a ball field and the possibility of either markets or space for community rituals.
“The site served as an important center at the regional level,” Ṡprajc says, “probably during the Classic period (250-1000 AD). The most common ceramic types that we collected on the surface and in some test pits are from the Late Classic (600-800 AD); however, the analysis of samples of this material will offer us more reliable data about the occupation.”
The team believes that the site of Ocomtún underwent alterations sometime around 1000 AD, thanks to the shrines in the center of the patio and squares. “A reflection of the ideological and population changes in times of crisis,” explains Ṡprajc, “which, finally, until the 10th century led to the collapse of the complex sociopolitical organization and the drastic demographic decline in the Maya Central Lowlands.”
Located between 18 and 31 miles from three other Maya cities discovered in the last decade, exploration of the Balamakú ecological reserve continues to offer exciting finds. The discovery of Ocomtún may be the most attractive.
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