Lost Mayan city with sinister ‘decapitation’ carvings is discovered deep in the Mexican jungle
Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Mayan city in the Mexican jungle that had remained untouched for more than a millennium.
Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Mayan city in the Mexican jungle that had remained untouched for more than a millennium.
The site, covered by thick vegetation in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, has been named Minanbé – which means ‘there is no path’ in Yucatec Maya.
It was discovered by a team of Mexican and Slovenian specialists, led by archaeologist Dr Ivan Šprajc who has spent three decades researching the region.
He has focused on surveying the Central Maya Lowlands, a vast archaeological landscape that was home to between nine and 11 million people during the Late Classic period between AD 600 and 900.
The latest field season, authorised by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), took researchers into the northern sector of the reserve.
The team was investigating an area west of Chactún, a major Maya centre first identified by the same project in 2013, using airborne laser scanning technology known as LiDAR.
To reach the site, archaeologists and local workers from the community of Constitución cleared a 5km route through the forest with machetes before travelling further by all-terrain vehicles and on foot in intense heat.
For Dr Šprajc, the lack of old logging tracks – known locally as alleyways – proved significant.
‘Compared to other places where we did surface surveys, access here was much more difficult; however, in the last three years, this is the first one we’ve found intact, with no signs of looting. It was a discovery, a great surprise for us.’
He added: ‘That’s why we chose the name Minanbé, which comes from Yucatec Maya ( mina’an , ‘there is no’, and be , ‘path’).
‘Thus, we follow the tradition in Mayan archaeology of naming some sites according to some characteristic of the place or in allusion to the circumstances of the discovery.’
Using LiDAR data, researchers had initially identified what appeared to be a 15-hectare settlement concealed beneath the forest canopy.