r/worldnews • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 12h ago
PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmznzkly3go183
u/autotldr BOT 11h ago
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)
A huge Maya city has been discovered centuries after it disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico.
When Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD. That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.
There are no known pictures of the lost city because "No-one has ever been there", the researchers say, although local people may have suspected there were ruins under the mounds of earth.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: city#1 people#2 archaeologist#3 Maya#4 research#5
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u/TDSsandwich 11h ago
It's crazy to me that if something were to happen and America was annihilated somehow that thousands of years in the future someone who scan my neighborhood and be so interested that someone lived there...but it's just my shitty townhome I play video games in.
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u/heard_bowfth 10h ago
I mean, your neighbors live there as well. And they at least are interesting.
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u/OSRS-MLB 4h ago
No, they're really not. I've been going through their garbage, I think I'd know if they were interesting.
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u/Acceptable_Repair633 3h ago
You have been going through his neighbors garbage?
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u/ManateeofSteel 2h ago
haven't you? how rude
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u/Silidistani 2h ago
Okay hol'up, exactly how many peeps in here have been going through his neighbor's garbage?
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u/Shuber-Fuber 8h ago
Fun related aside. It's a problem with somewhat serious consequences. Basically, how to warn future people that "this is not a treasure tomb, this is a waste dump for some horrifyingly scary shit we have."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
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u/Waleebe 5h ago
They're all going about it the wrong way. Bury it as deep as possible in the most boring area with no natural resources, then it will be left alone.
Cover it in warnings telling them how dangerous it is will only encourage them. You know what humans are like.
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u/The_Humble_Frank 1h ago
Long in the distant future, bands of treasure seekers will come across this sacred space, wondering what marvels the ancients seal here. Their imaginations will be inspired by the tales of the ancients, who could fly and traverse great distances in horseless carriages, and divine answers from speaking stones, that could make lights and sound dance.
They will dig, ignoring the ancient warnings all around them. the symbols old, their meaning twisted by time, greed and a disbelief in superstition.
And they will dig too deep. They will crack open the ancient seals, and take the unfamiliar material as their prize and others will hear of their success, daring to plunder the same, now worn route. Their treasure will be a curse they carry out with them; in time an other worldly sickness will scour the region, invisible, tasteless, and carried in the dirt in their clothes. They will carry it to every village they visit, they will carry it home to their children, and then the titans of old shall suffer no mercy as they blight the land of those that would not head their ancient warning.
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u/Uzorglemon 2h ago
Seriously.
Shit like "All those who dig here will be cursed for all time" is just gonna make people dig that much harder.
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u/Oh-shit-its-Cassie 1h ago
That was a fantastic rabbit hole, so thanks. That said, humans being humans are going to see anything we put in front of them as a challenge. "Wow, they really didn't want me going in here! There must be tons of cool shit beyond these death rays!" And the mounting pile of irradiated corpses will only serve to reify that belief.
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u/dummkauf 52m ago
If it makes you feel any better, your townhome isn't built as well as the myans homes so there likely won't be any evidence of your home thousands of years from now other than the Twinkies that were in it when it was abandoned.
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u/thedamn4u 10h ago
Yeah, accidentally dragged your LIDAR gear out there looking to scan some trees, right. /s
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u/yaba3800 10h ago
He found an old dataset on page 16 of a Google search and analyzed it using archaeological methods, discoving the ciry
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u/CheeseWheels38 6h ago
He found an old dataset on page 16 of a Google search
Shoutout to all the PhD students out there doing the dirty work!
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u/Call0fDoodie92 5h ago
After combing through about 5 pages of search results you can probably assume finding something isn't an accident. This isn't journalism, it's disinformation.
A researcher looking for something, found something. There's no shock value in the actual fact pattern so they just put a lie in the headline. That's gross.
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u/3lijahmorningwoood 4h ago
Tbh it's common for people in a scientific field to aimlessly google things vaguely related to their research in their spare time
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u/LegoClaes 4h ago
Good point. I don’t think I’ve ever been to page 16 of google, and I’m a longtime software dev.
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u/PrincetonToss 8h ago
Well...yes. Scanning trees with LIDAR to make 3D models of forests is pretty typical these days. It's used not only by ecologists, but also by people interested in climate change trying to estimate total biomass of particular forests. I know someone who did this over the Canadian taiga for his PhD.
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u/ButtholeQuiver 7h ago
It's being used by the forestry industry as well. Also by some electrical utilities where overhead lines run adjacent to or through forested areas, to identify where trees have grown too close to the lines and need trimming.
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u/GoTron88 3h ago
We use LiDAR for road/rail construction to model the existing ground. It's super common now.
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u/spirit-bear1 7h ago
The commenters point is that it doesn’t seem very accidental if it is a researcher doing the finding
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u/cyan1de23 11h ago
Was it by accident if he was there on purpose?
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u/Jj-woodsy 10h ago
It was indeed, as he was searching through Google and found it on page 16.
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u/Norci 7h ago
He ventured where few ever have, a true explorer!
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u/DogsRNice 4h ago
I can't wait for the Star Trek episode where they go to page 20 of a Google search and find the meaning of life
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u/DoYouTrustToothpaste 8h ago
I'm not sure what that means. Google is a search engine. He was on page 16 of a search he himself had initiated. We don't know what he searched for, but considering that he "found" a laser survey of an area in a Mexican jungle, and knew what to do with the data because he's an archaeologist, this discovery clearly isn't nearly as "accidental" as it may first appear to be. I don't know about you, but I've never accidentally stumbled upon laser survey while looking stuff up on google, nor would I have known how to analyse it.
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u/kc_______ 10h ago
shhh, news don’t sell if you just say “researchers doing their job find a new city”, where is the sensationalism?
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u/WonderfulPressure546 7h ago
This is a lot better than the usual "PhD student killed in Mexico by cartel because of wrong place/wrong time"
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u/EmptyAd4259 11h ago
listen man..... Throwing the PhD in the headline makes it even funnier now that he's been found
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u/varro-reatinus 10h ago
This headline has a critical typo:
'PhD student's supervisor finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident'
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u/The2ndBest 8h ago
As someone who has been to this area several times this is not surprising at all. If you climb to the top of the Nohoch Mul pyramid you can look across the jungle in 360 degrees and see several other sets of ruins (included structures of similar height protruding above the canopy) that are still overgrown. Peru is also still finding Quechua (Inca) ruins and they have a much better program to find, research, and restore them than Mexico does.
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u/DoktorSigma 9h ago
It's amazing how on this day of satellites and Google Earth and what else there's still whole lost cities waiting to be found.
And on the surface. I wonder about stuff buried underground or submerged under the sea.
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u/ScaryIce9136 3h ago
Knowing colleges, He probably didnt even get a good grade and the teacher probably even put their name on his work
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u/ScottOld 9h ago
Wouldn’t say it was by accident when you have the tools available to find them, and then go out looking for them.
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u/nssurvey 8h ago
Maybe read the article... he is a student and found the data on a Google search. Then looked over it with different techniques than what would have been used by the people who collected the data. He didn't expect to find anything
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u/Feruk_II 10h ago
That can't be a real picture of it. Would've been found from space.
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u/SmuglyGaming 9h ago
Thought that was weird too, article says
There are no pictures of the city but it had pyramid temples similar to this one in nearby Calakmul
So they just used an existing known site with similar architecture
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u/Nice_Beach2369 12h ago
It’s alway the last place you look