The ancient Mayan cities discovered deep in the Mexican jungle — and the secrets they hold
The ancient Mayan cities discovered deep in the Mexican jungle — and the secrets they hold
By Terrence McCoy August 22 at 5:31 AM
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The ancient city of Lagunita, deep in the Yucatan jungle. (Courtesy of Ivan Sprajc)[/font]
In the 1970s, an American explorer named Eric Von Euw ventured into unexplored forest at the base of the Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula near the border of Guatemala. Called the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, it’s a sweeping expanse of trees and river that extends 2,800 square miles. What Von Euw returned with was remarkable. He had drawn images of an “extraordinary facade with an entrance representing open jaws of the earth monster,” as would later be written of it.
Von Euw would never publish the drawings. And despite several attempts to once again locate the “open jaws of the earth monster,” no one ever could. The site and the city that held it — which came to be known as “Lagunita” — was lost. It would become, according to Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, “a mystery.”
Now, four decades later, another explorer has ventured into the Yucatan jungle to find Lagunita. After a two-month expedition, archaeologist Ivan Sprajc of the Slovenian Academy emerged from the jungle with more than drawings. He had pictures. Along with another previously unknown city he named Tamchen, Sprajc had rediscovered Lagunita. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to have been “the seat of a relatively powerful polity,” a researcher said.
Why had it remained hidden for so long? “The information about Lagunita were vague and totally useless,” he told Discovery News. “In the jungle you can be as little as 600 feet from a large site and do not even suspect it might be there. Small mounds are all over the place, but they give you no idea about where an urban center might be.”
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/22/the-ancient-mayan-cities-discovered-deep-in-the-mexican-jungle-and-the-secrets-they-hold/
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