In a biological in ’s Campeche State, a team of archaeologists has pyramids, palaces, a and other of an city they call Ocomtún.
Armed with , and -saws, , trees and , dense , the archaeologists a down rocky trails.
At , they reached their destination in ’s Yucatán Peninsula: a city where pyramids and palaces above over 1,000 years ago, with a and terraces now and .
’s National Institute of Anthropology and History , their late month, saying they had discovered an Maya city in “a practically to archaeology.” “These stories about ‘ cities in the ’ — very often these things are quite or being by ,” said Simon Martin, a anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not in the . “But this is much closer to the . ”
The team of archaeologists who discovered the ruins named them Ocomtún, the Yucatec Maya word for the the city.
The the , in Campeche State, as having once been a center of Maya life. During at part of the Classic Maya era — 250 to 900 A.D. — it was a populated . Today it is part of a large ecological where and tropical trees boots and tires, and water the limestone .
“I’m often asked why nobody has come there, and I say, ‘Well, because you need to be a little , to go there,” said Ivan Sprajc, the ’s archaeologist and a professor at a Slovenian center, ZRC SAZU. “It’s not an easy job.”
The has been over the decade by lidar, a that airborne lasers to dense and reveal the structures and human-altered landscapes . But in the end, it still comes down to treks.
“Sprajc is doing precisely the right thing; lidar as a but not interpreting the without ,” said Rosemary Joyce, an anthropologist at the University of , Berkeley.
She said in an email that it was unlikely for any newly to “ change narratives,” but that such could help see “more variation in the ways that different Maya carried out life during the Classic .”
And it “unusual to find such a large that nobody knows about,” said Hutson, an archaeologist at the University of .
For decades archaeologists on the help of descendants of the Maya to identify and the to them. But because this part of Campeche has for decades been a , Dr. Hutson said, “there’s been no archaeologists walking this at all.”
Dr. Sprajc, 67, said the to Ocomtún took about a month and a , “ short” compared with the two months or more. The was made during the , which can be , but less so than treks in the .
Surrounded by wetlands, Ocomtún pyramids, plazas, elite residences and “strange” of structures almost in , Dr. Sprajc said. “We don’t know anything about that from the rest of the Maya lowlands,” he said.
The largest structure in Ocomtún was a pyramid about 50 feet tall, which Dr. Sprajc said would have been a temple. It and some other structures stood on a large rectangular platform, raised about 30 feet from the and with sides more than 250 feet .
“Just by the scale of it, the location of it, it must be a significant ,” said Charles Golden, an anthropologist at Brandeis University. He said could help answer a of questions about who lived there and their to other Maya cities and settlements.
People appeared to have left Ocomtún the same time they did other Maya cities, from about 800 to 1000 A.D., a that to like and strife.
A to those conflicts may have been at the . While most of the structures were the team , upside down in a stairway, a with that appears to have been from another Maya settlement.
Such were sometimes “brought as , of from other , and this is what apparently happened in this ,” Dr. Sprajc said.
Dr. Joyce said that the ’s of conquest was , “so we may have here of Ocomtún being part of the great wars that the ” of the Maya world.
The team also some agricultural , which archaeologists called a of the Maya’s widespread to make the difficult more for humans. Using , water and capture, and landscape like terraces, the Maya managed to live in “what today ,” Dr. Martin said.
For modern passing , water has to be in by . Dr. Sprajc said that after his team had carved about 37 miles of trail to Ocomtún, it still took five to 10 hours to reach the because the was so difficult to .
Such huge , both for the field and before anyone sets foot in a . Lidar alone can tens of thousands of dollars. Dr. Sprajc not only from his own institution, but also four Slovenian and two American charities.
Other may now seek the , and needed to Ocomtún, but Dr. Sprajc will not be among them. He said he was busy a new expedition, next March or April, for another part of the Yucatán where lidar imagery has up .
Fellow scientists, by the at Ocomtún, are to what his team might find next.
“This shows in like Campeche, which on the one hand are close to like Cancún and heavy , there’s still these that nobody’s really ,” said Dr. Golden, the Brandeis anthropologist. “So that’s always exciting that these still have to .”