The Mayans built a lost city with 15-meter pyramids. And we have found it thanks to LiDAR

Ocomtún translates as stone column. The name comes from the Yucatec Mayan and is the one chosen by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) to name the new archaeological site found in the south of the country.

A millennial city. The new deposit is located south of the Yucatan peninsula, in Balamkú, Campeche state. It is the remains of a Mayan city of the classical period (between the year 250 and 1000 CE) and extends along about 50 hectares. The city may have been an important settlement in the so-called Central Lowlands during this period.

One of the characteristics highlighted by the INAH team responsible for the discovery are pyramidal structures, some of which they rose more than 15 meters. The name of the place, however, has been inspired by other structures, cylindrical columns that archaeologists believe formed part of the entrance to the upper rooms of the city buildings.

Another outstanding element of the archaeological site is The Acropolisa raised esplanade with a rectangular floor plan about 80 meters to the side and elevated about 10 m with respect to its surroundings. One of the pyramids can be found in this acropolis, with the top some 25 m from the rest of the area.

The city and its neighborhoods. The southeastern core of the city had three squares surrounded by large buildings. Between the two”main squares” of the area, the archaeologists highlight a set of low and elongated structures, “arranged almost in concentric circles”.

They also highlighted the discovery of a court for the Mayan ball game, a sport typical of this civilization about which we do not know many details. Details as if it was a game where sport or ritual was what predominated.

Not just ruins. Beyond the architecture of the area, the archaeologists also found some objects of interest. “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 on the occupation sequences”, explained in a press release Ivan Ṡprajc, project coordinator.

The expert also talks about the changes that the city probably experienced during the Terminal Classic (800-1000 CE), “a reflection of ideological and population changes in times of crisis that, finally, by the 10th century, led to the collapse of the complex organization sociopolitical and drastic demographic decline in the Maya Central Lowlands.

3,000 square kilometers. This finding has been the result of the first field work carried out in the project context “Expanding the archaeological panorama of the Maya Central Lowlands” coordinated by Ṡprajc. This project analyzes a large portion of territory unexplored by archaeologists: about 3,000 km².

The archaeologists who arrived at the site did so on the track by cheap aerial surveys. In March this year, a LiDAR scan (Light Detection and Ranging, a kind of radar that uses light instead of radio waves) carried out by the Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, at the University of Houston, had detected the possible presence of archaeological remains in the area. It is not the first time that this technology helps explorers to find archaeological remains in the North American country.

Past and future. The work recently presented by the INAH also includes remains found outside the city but with characteristics similar to those found in the old city, such as the columns that give the city its name. These remains are, say the archaeologists, similar to those found in the southeast area of ​​the city, including ball courts and central altars. Archaeologists believe that they could be markets or areas dedicated to rituals.

Future analyzes may give us more clues about this “new” and mysterious city, Ocomtún, its relevance within the Mayan culture and the reasons that led its inhabitants to abandon it.

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Image | INAH