Lost Mayan City Hidden Deep In The Peten Jungle Discovered By Expedition Team

Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com -  It is impossible to say how many ancient cities may still be hidden in the remote, inaccessible jungle of Guatemala. Exploration of these territories is extremely difficult and often dangerous, but there are those who are not discouraged by fearsome animals roaming the jungle or other dangers one may encounter on the way.

Matt Hill from Wiltshire, UK who runs a local expeditions company called Matt Hill Expeditions says that on his last visit to the Peten Jungle in Guatemala he stumbled upon a lost Maya city. Accompanied by 20 people, the team spent a week in the jungle.

Matt Hill and his expedition team say they have found an ancient lost Maya city in the jungle. Credit: Wiltshire Times

“We led 20 people deeper and deeper into the Peten Jungle and spent seven days under the tree canopy sleeping in hammocks.

While there, we found an ancient Mayan city that had been hidden for decades and discovered that a tunnel containing a royal burial chamber had been looted. But we found artifacts which will be of archaeological interest.

The Jungle in Guatemala is immense. At the moment, it is at the center of one of the most exciting archaeological revelations in the world.

Many of the Mayan cities are being found from the air using Lidar technology which has unearthed hundreds more sites than they thought were there. They are in remote, areas, inaccessible to vehicles and drops.

This new information is forcing historians to completely re-write their understanding of Mayan history. The civilization seems to have been way bigger and more complex than previously thought,” Hill told the Wiltshire Times.

According to the interview with Wiltshire Times, Hill "joined a local guide on the trek, Carlos Vivar, who has previously presented to the Royal Geographical Society in the UK.

Carlos said: “With Matt's team we were able to go deeper into the jungle than I have ever taken anyone in 25 years of being a guide.

Due to the skills and experience of the team we were able to spend seven days walking deep into the jungle as opposed to having to come back out each day.

Ancient cities have previously been unearthed in the Peten Jungle. Credit: Media Viewer - CC BY-SA 2.5

This enabled us to discover sites that are previously unrecorded that will undoubtedly hold priceless information and artifacts. I am excited to go back and excavate them.”

The Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, part of the Ministry of Culture and Sports in Guatemala, will be asked to verify the find."

The Wilshire expedition leader now hopes the discovery will be presented to the Royal Geographical Society in London.

In recent years, scientists using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) have made incredible discoveries while studying the jungle in Guatemala. Researchers at Tulane University have documented the discovery of dozens of ancient cities in northern Guatemala through the use of jungle-penetrating Lidar (light detection and ranging) technology.

A while back scientists announced they had located the world's oldest and largest Maya structure in Tabasco, Mexico, near the northwestern border of Guatemala.

See also: More Archaeology News

The newly discovered site of Aguada Fénix lurked beneath the surface, hidden by its size and low profile, until 2017. The monument measures nearly 4,600 feet long, ranges from 30 to 50 feet high, and includes nine wide causeways.

To learn more about the lost Maya city discovered by Matt Hill scientists would either send an archaeology team to the site or investigate it using LIDAR. One can hope this will happen in the near future.

Written by Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com Staff Writer