Reports of a young Canadian who discovered an ancient Mayan city have been dismissed by experts in the matter.
A 15-year-old from Saint-Jean-de-Matha, William Gadoury, hypothesized that Mayans might have built their cities according to the lining of major constellations. The report was part of a school project.
Once he started investigating this theory, he discovered that lots of cities appeared to be lined up with bright stars. But one major constellation seemed to be missing a settlement. With the help of the Canadian Space Agency, the young man was able to see over the remote area through a satellite and spotted what appeared to be a man-made structure.
According to Ed Kurjack, a well known archeologist, in Classic Maya times the area was cleared of trees. And instead, they were full of towns that were close to each other. So it’s not likely to find anything of archeological interest in that area, explained Susan Milbrath. Milbrath is a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, according to Wired.
It’s unclear which stars the Mayans clustered together into constellations, so it’s complicated to establish a relationship between modern star chart and Mayan city planning.
Regarding the man-made structure spotted by a sensing specialist and a Canadian Space Agency scientist, specialist say that it might be a recently abandoned field.
An expert say that in the area pictured by the satellite is not an important archeological site
Archaeologist Geoffrey E. Braswell from the University of California at San Diego he and his colleagues have visited before the areas in questions for research. The statement was made through an email.
“One image shows two rectangular features on the southeast edge of a dried seasonal lagoon. This is the Laguna El Civalón in southeast Campeche, Mexico, located at 17o 56’ 42” N by 90o 10’ 0” N. The two rectangular features identified as pyramids are small fields filled with weeds. The fields may be fallow or may be active marijuana fields, which are common in the area. There is no important archaeological site there,” Geoffrey elaborated.
In the second image, a small seasonally dried patch of swamp can be seen about 500m north of the Laguna El Manguito, also known as San Felipe. The image is of 17o 53’ 44” N by 90o 6’ 35” W. Even though when there are no ancient pyramids, there is a very interesting colonial archaeological site nearby.
Source: Washington Post