Key Points
A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away..
The settlement, named Valeriana after a nearby freshwater lagoon, has all the characteristics of a classic Maya political capital: enclosed plazas, pyramids, a ball court, a reservoir, and an architectural layout that suggests a foundation prior to 150 AD, according to a newly published study in the journal Antiquity...
And how did Tulane University graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas find it?.
It is 1848 and the governor of Petn, Guatemala, Modesto Mndez, together with Ambrosio Tut, an artist and chronicler of the time, rediscovered Tikal, one of the most majestic archaeological sites of the Mayan civilization..
Auld-Thomas: I hope this research inspires archaeologists around the world to start working with found or repurposed data sets that have been collected and are sitting around gathering dust..
