Three Ancient Maya Cities Found in Jungle

Located in the Mexican state of Campeche, the newly discovered cities were hidden so deeply in the dense jungle that it was barely possible to access them on foot.

They were found near Chactun, another Mayan city that was found back in 2013 by Sprajc during a previous expedition. "Aerial photographs helped us in locating the sites," he said.

news.discovery.com...

Those ancient people sure knew how to build things to last a long time. In a hundred fifty years all the homes I built will be gone. Heathens sure can make things to last.

a reply to: nighthawk1954

Thanks for sharing! What a shame the the text is eroded. Still a fantastic find though.

a reply to: nighthawk1954

So beautiful! Love this stuff, just imagine all the other sites awaiting discovery.

The monster mouth doorway at Lagunita. Note the stylized eye of the earth monster and fangs along the doorway jamb.

Sprajc and his team also found the remains of a temple pyramid almost 65 feet high, a ball court and several massive palace-like buildings arranged around four major plazas.

An inscription on one of these stelae reveals the stone was engraved on Nov. 29, 711 A.D. by a "lord of 4 k'atuns (20-year periods)." Unfortunately, the remaining text, which included the name of the ruler and possibly of his wife, is heavily eroded.

Images from OP link

Posted to ATS a little while back by smyleegrl: Ancient Mayan City Discovered in Mexican Jungle, it's part of the same discovery by Sprajc.

Wow, what an amazing find. And they almost found a list of owners.

Some stone Scottish and English homes are over 150 years old. If you are lucky, you can get a copy of the ownership titles going back all that time. It is bizarre seeing a list of names and signatures of people who are gone, yet you know they lived in your home at some time. Seeing those names makes them become alive again.

Some stone Scottish and English homes are over 150 years old. If you are lucky, you can get a copy of the ownership titles going back all that time. It is bizarre seeing a list of names and signatures of people who are gone, yet you know they lived in your home at some time. Seeing those names makes them become alive again.

Where are you from? there is Houses here in UK far older than 150 years loads of normal houses are over 100 years old. Where I live there are houses over 500 years old.

Always great to hear about new discoveries.


I have no illusions that there will be plenty more not just in this region but also in South America, Africa and Eurasia etc. I'm pretty sure some of these will eventually be game changers...

As always
Stay tuned.

The oldest known European wooden house is 800 years old and built in 1287 in Switzerland. It is in the village of Schwyz. I believe it is called Bethlehem House.

However, there are some wooden temples in Japan that are older one there was built 1400 years ago. The Horyu-ji Temple.

I'm happy to hear that they are discovering more Mayan ruins and cities. I remember going to see the ruins from TIkal to Palenque nad everything in between back in the late 80's. Uxmal was my favorite. However I would really enjoy going back to the Yucutan to see the newer discoveries.

Was a amazing adventure. Back then you had to park on little dirt turnoffs on the side of the highways and walk a half mile through the jungle on dirt paths to get to the clearings where the ruins were. Can't imagine how hard it would be to get to one of those ruins without a cleared path. The jungle there is more like a dense thicket and very hard to walk through.

Remember walking around a bend in one of these dirt paths and watching a pair of really obease tourists huffing around the corner towards us clearly runing for their lives. "Go back! Go back!!!: They kept waving us off as the ran right past us. Then we see what they were running from. A 250lbs razor back hog trotting after them clearly amused and enjoying the that he could make these strange pink fleshy creatures run. We jumpled into the tree line to avoid the beast, but he paid us no attention and kept trotting after the other tourists that were running. The pig was clearly having a good time doing this.

ANother set of ruins and a differnt dirt path through the jungle. A group of us were tourists were walking down one of those paths and we hear a ominous Hoooh! Hoooh! Hoooh! coming from all around us, many animals making this sound, closing in on all of us like a noose tightening. Hooh!! Hooh!!!! HOOOH!!!! getting louder. When it sounded like they were right on top of us a bright yellow fuit the size of a grapefruit whizzes by my head. I look at where it comes from, howling still going on and a pack of Howler Monkeys had surrounded us throwing fruit at us to make us leave. I guess they took exception to us being in their territory. We ran for it. Looked back and the monkeys looked pleased that we were running from them.

Besides the ruins the best part about visiting the mayan temples was the hoards of bright electric blue butterflys that flitted around so dense they were like clouds. YOu would have to walk right through them as they hovered about head high off the dirt paths.

I still can't imagine trying to get to these new ruins without a wide path cleared through the jungle.

a reply to: Hanslune

My house dates back to the late 14th, early 15th century. It is made in the same fashion as Curwen Hall, which was built in 1404.

It's weird, because somebody built the current house around it, so whilst outside it looks like a Georgian period design (18th century), inside, if you look behind the wooden panelling on the walls you can see the original structure made of stones.

a reply to: nighthawk1954
Terrific news. I do think those people who go tramping through the jungle to find these places are utterly amazing and put up with a lot of bugs, etc.

I would wonder what the area looked like when these cities were built and people lived there. I image they would be totally at home and in control of the jungle.

Look forward to seeing more about these cities as they are explored.

I agree that it's a fantastic discovery and an amazing news. I was always fascinated by Mayan and Inca and Aztec culture. Yet we still know so little about them. Hopefully researching those new building (hopefully conducted by responsible and wise people) will give us more answers and uncover at least a bit more about them. My greatest dream is to go there and see it all with my own eyes. I envy you Bassplyr - but it a good way

So much left to discover on earths land and waters and yet were trying to discover more things outside of Earth. We would learn so much more about ourselves if we look for it on our planet -.-