A lost Mayan city may have been found in Mexico by a 15-year-old Canadian boy using ancient star charts and images from Google Earth.
William Gadoury, who attends the Académie Antoine-Manseau in Joliette, Quebec, told
CBC News that he researched 22 ancient Mayan constellations and discovered that when they were overlaid on a map they matched the locations of 117 known cities.
Gadoury said he theorized that one city had not been discovered when he realized that a 23rd constellation was not completed.
"The Mayans were extremely good builders, but they often built in places that made little practical sense — far from rivers, far from fertile areas," Gadoury told the CBC News. "It seemed strange for a civilization that was so intelligent. I knew they were good at astronomy, so I tried to make the link."
The teen used satellite images given to him by the Canadian Space Agency and then mapped the sites on Google Earth to spot where he believed the possible lost city would be in Mexico, said
The Independent.
Satellite scans of the area found "linear features" in the location, which could be some sort of buildings, but Daniel De Lisle, from the Canadian Space Agency, told The Independent that the area is packed with dense vegetation, making it hard to study.
"There are linear features that would suggest there is something underneath that big canopy," De Lisle said. "There are enough items to suggest it could be a manmade structure."
Armand La Rocque, from the University of New Brunswick, told The Independent that satellite images show what appeared to be a street network and a large square, suggesting that it could be a pyramid.
David Pendergast, an archeologist whose work on the Maya with the Royal Ontario Museum spans three decades, appeared to downplay the possible discovery, according to the
National Post.
"There are quite a few sites that would probably not fit the (constellation) pattern … That doesn't say, of course, that this boy hasn't pinpointed a site," Pendergast told the National Post.
"The fundamental fact is if you took an area where there were no major sites shown, the odds that you would strike a major site in the area are quite high, because there are sites all over the place."