Archaeologists just made an incredible discovery deep in the jungle—a lost Maya city! Hidden for centuries, this ancient city was found using high-tech tools like lasers to scan through the dense trees. The city is filled with the ruins of temples, pyramids, and even homes that were once bustling with life. It’s amazing to think about how this civilization thrived so long ago in such a remote place. The find is a huge win for history lovers and archaeologists alike. Who knows what other secrets might still be hiding in the jungle? Credit: Sarah Parcak: by Joi Ito - https://flic.kr/p/oTZq3m, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sarah_Parcak,_2014_(crop).jpg Pyramid: by Mirfen, CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://skfb.ly/6DpT7 Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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00:00You are lost deep within the jungle in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
00:05There are strange noises all around you, and to make it worse, the sun is setting.
00:11Soon, you'll be alone in the middle of an unknown rainforest.
00:15Guess it was a pretty bad idea to come looking for El Dorado on your own, wasn't it?
00:20You keep walking as fast as you can, when suddenly, wait!
00:24What's this you're seeing? It looks like large stairways made out of stone.
00:29This definitely doesn't look natural, so you take a picture.
00:33Maybe you didn't strike gold, but you might have just found something relevant.
00:39Congratulations, you found Ocumtun, a long-lost Mayan city, hidden 37 miles into the jungle.
00:47The name literally translates to Stone Column.
00:50Stone was probably in at the time, so these guys used a lot of it to build their pyramids, houses, and even ball courts.
00:58If you ever thought that Europeans invented ball games, think twice.
01:02Mayans loved to play ball games for recreational purposes.
01:07Ocumtun is part of a series of other long-lost Mayan cities that are being discovered with the help of new technology nowadays.
01:15We'll talk more about the other ones in a jiffy.
01:17Perhaps the biggest surprise of this one is that it was surrounded by wetlands, which is why the city was built on high ground.
01:26The city was monumental, covering an area of over 120 acres.
01:32That would be as big as 90 football fields right next to each other.
01:37Scientists have found proof that Ocumtun had pyramids of up to 49 feet high,
01:43and that it was likely an important social hub between 250 and 1,000 CE.
01:50This is definitely a game-changer.
01:53But lost Mayan cities began to be unearthed in the 19th century.
01:57Modern technologies, such as LiDAR imaging, help archaeologists see through dense canopies of the forests.
02:03This means that people don't really have to risk getting lost in the tropical jungle like you did at the beginning of this video.
02:10LiDAR works sort of like an X-ray.
02:13It sends out laser beams that can detect any signs of ruins or ancient constructions.
02:19According to space archaeologist Sara Parcek,
02:22satellite imagery has been a key player in discovering ancient cities in South America, Egypt, and other places.
02:29Sara herself spends most of her days scouring images for any signs of where there could have been cities long ago.
02:37She says that more often than not, what happens is that ruins are covered by vegetation, soil, or sand, which makes them super tricky to find.
02:46But thanks to these awesome tools, scientists also made the huge discovery of ancient Mayan causeways, which spread throughout old Mayan territories.
02:57I mean, take a look at these roadways!
02:59You'd expect to see ruins like this in places such as Portugal, England, or the United States.
03:05I'm talking about 130-feet-wide roads painted white to help travelers journey through the nighttime.
03:12Scientists recently unearthed a 110-mile network of roads such as these,
03:17and they think this dates back to before the first registered Mayan highways we've known so far.
03:24These roadways, which sometimes ran over the swampy ground and were even elevated at times, are being called the world's first superhighways.
03:33Even if there is no registry of animal-powered vehicles, it's believed that the Maya used them to travel around a network of possible 964 settlements.
03:43They were built like a huge spiderweb, and from what archaeologists have gathered,
03:48this huge system of roads worked to connect a big system of economic and social interactions between Mayan cities.
03:56This completely debunks the traditional idea that the Mayan pre-classic period, which dates back to 2000 BCE, was made of small, tribal settlements.
04:06Imagine the manpower and engineering ability you need to muster to build something close to these white highways!
04:13Scientists believe that these causeways were built pretty much the same way as the Mayans built their pyramids, with a mixture of mud and quarry stone.
04:22Oh, and using several layers of limestone to make them white!
04:27That's pretty cool, right? But let's take a few steps back for a moment to get some context.
04:33The Mayans were one of the biggest pre-Columbian civilizations living in the Americas.
04:38Until now, experts believe that at its apex, the Mayan civilization consisted of over 40 cities with a population of millions of people.
04:47That's a lot of folks!
04:49Their civilization spanned Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, and Belize.
04:55And they survived mainly on agriculture.
04:58The thing is, the Yucatan Peninsula was an extremely difficult place to grow crops.
05:03So the Mayans had to develop a complex irrigation system in most of their cities.
05:08They built a series of ceremonial buildings, pyramids, and plazas.
05:13The Mayans might have been keen pyramid builders, but they also developed an advanced astronomical system.
05:19With whatever ancient technology they had, they were able to predict the exact location of planets such as Venus and Mars, as well as the exact dates of eclipses.
05:30If you've ever seen examples of ancient Mayan cities, this is Tikal.
05:35Located at the heart of the Guatemalan jungle, Tikal is believed to have been the capital of the ancient Mayan conquest state.
05:42At its height, it was comparable in importance to cities such as London or New York in today's world.
05:48It's composed of a series of complex monuments.
05:51The North Acropolis is one of Tikal's most ancient complexes of monuments.
05:56Built solely by human hands around 350 BCE, it served as the resting place of kings and chiefs.
06:04Its monuments are up to 200 feet high.
06:07Back in the day, the step pyramid temples were painted a beautiful red.
06:12Mayans loved that color.
06:14Today, of course, you'll only see the limestone.
06:19Then there's Chichen Itza.
06:21It's got one of the best preserved pyramids on Earth to date.
06:25Located in Mexico's Yucatan state, this Mayan city is well over 1,500 years old.
06:32At its peak, it was home to 35,000 people.
06:36The site covers four square miles of land.
06:39The highlight is El Castillo, a tremendous step-like temple standing 80 feet above ground.
06:46Its most peculiar feature is that it has 91 steps up each of its four sides, including the upper platform,
06:53which makes for 365 steps, the same number of days as the solar year.
07:02You can see that these folks were a pretty big deal, huh?
07:05That's why nobody can really understand what happened to them.
07:09There's a big lack of evidence on the decline of this almighty empire.
07:13What could have been the cause of their demise?
07:16Was it a drought?
07:17New research in 2017 did bring some new discoveries into the mix.
07:23Using data from a site at Ceibal, located at southwest of Tikal,
07:29scientists analyzed radiocarbon data from ceramics and archaeological excavations
07:34to extract new information about the unexpected demise of this great civilization.
07:40The information shows that instead of a sudden collapse,
07:43the Mayans most likely fell in waves of social instability and political crises.
07:49These events are believed to have deteriorated Mayan city centers
07:53and began causing the dispersion of the Mayan population.
07:57It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes, though.
08:01But hey, recent discoveries are shedding a big light on humanity's past,
08:06not only about the Mayan Empire, but about other long-lost civilizations of South America.
08:12A major recent discovery in Brazil was done using satellite imaging technology
08:17and is also shocking scientists.
08:20Some images from near the Xingu River, also in the Amazon,
08:23suggest that cities of millions of people might have existed inside the jungle
08:28way before our modern civilization ever existed.
08:32I mean, if this doesn't shock you, I don't know what will.
08:37Satellite imagery also detected a network of trenches
08:41dating back to 200 and 1,200 CE in the Bolivian Amazon forest.
08:47These proofs suggest settlements that could have supported around 60,000 people
08:52right in the middle of the Amazon forest.
08:55When researchers from the University of Flora went on ground to check the satellite information,
09:00they were shocked to find several mounds that were accompanied by ditches and geoglyphs.
09:05Archaeologists also found remnants of carefully designed walls centered around plazas,
09:10much like the type of construction done by the ancient Mayans.
09:17That's it for today.
09:18So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:23Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!