Lost Mayan city with sinister carvings discovered deep in jungle after 1,000 years

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be a hidden Mayan city in the Mexican jungle that still has stone carved with ancient symbols even from a thousand years ago.

The incredible find is at the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, where it is also known as Minanbé – translated from Yucatec Maya to ‘there is no path’.

Dr Ivan Šprajc, who has put three decades of work into the area, revealed that the location is home to artefacts that were discovered via the use of airborne laser scanning, known as LiDAR.

This allowed researchers to view the area that was bustling with life back in the Late Classic period between AD 600 and 900.

The trip, which was authorised by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), and saw the major Maya centre first identified in 2013 with the technology, began with researchers hacking away at 5 kilometres of terrain to clear it for inspection after first noting what appeared to be a 15-hectare settlement beneath the forest canopy.

The uncovered site was later found to include an entire area filled with everything you’d need to live as a Mayan.

The site was discovered after scanning the area (INAH)

“It’s a unique, unprecedented finding,” INAH archaeologist Lino Espinoza Garcia told Agence France-Presse.

There were plazas, palatial and religious structures, terraces and wetlands with hydraulic channels, as well as a 13-foot pyramidal temple which archaeologist Vitan Vujanović called the ‘first’ temple he has dealt with that is so well preserved that the writings on the stone can sill be seen.

He said: “This is the first time I have recorded a temple that is more or less well-preserved, and a stela still bearing glyphs.”

Researchers also identified a monument engraved with the scene of a decapitation, dubbed Stela 1, which is part of 14 stelae and altars, that can be seen with scenes or messages donning the surface.

According to the scientists, it’s carved with the date 849 C.E. which is when it is believed all of the stelae were carved.

The researchers found engravings depicting scary scenes (INAH)

But oddly, the area was void of logging tracks, which let Dr Šprajc in on a significant detail about the land.

"Compared to other places where we did surface surveys, access here was much more difficult; however, in the last three years, this is the first one we’ve found intact, with no signs of looting. It was a discovery, a great surprise for us,” he said, noting that the lack of paths meant they could see that nobody had raided and transported goods from the location.

He added: "That’s why we chose the name Minanbé, which comes from Yucatec Maya (mina’an , ‘there is no’, and be , ‘path’). Thus, we follow the tradition in Mayan archaeology of naming some sites according to some characteristic of the place or in allusion to the circumstances of the discovery.”