Archaeologists have discovered a lost Mayan city full of pyramids and palatial complexes, stretching over 54 acres, in a remote jungle in southeastern Mexico.
The ruins of the city, covered in thick vegetation, were found in Campeche, a province in the western Yucatan peninsula that's littered with Mayan complexes and artifacts.
The newfound site is dubbed Chactun, and it stretches over roughly 54 acres (22 hectares). Researchers believe the city was occupied during the Late Classic Mayan period, from roughly AD 600 until AD 900, when the civilisation mysteriously collapsed, LiveScience reported.
"It is one of the largest sites in the Central Lowlands, comparable in its extent and the magnitude of its buildings with Becan, Nadzcaan and El Palmar in Campeche," said archaeologist Ivan Sprajc from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Sprajc and his team found three monumental complexes with the remains of pyramids - the tallest being 75 feet high - as well as ball courts, plazas, homes, altars, bits of painted stucco and stone slabs known as stele.
Epigraphers are still poring over inscriptions at Chactun, but one stele refers to an apparent ruler named K'inich B'ahlam, the researchers said.
Traces of the lost city were first spotted in aerial images of a vast forested area, which previously had only been explored by loggers and rubber-tappers and was considered "a total blank" in the map of Mayan sites, Sprajc said.
"With aerial photographs examined stereoscopically, we found many features that were obviously architectural remains.
"From there we took the coordinates and the next step was to locate the ancient alleys used by tappers and loggers to reach the area," Sprajc said.
