around 520km south-east of Mexico City, has been revealed with the help of airborne lidar—a laser mapping technology that enables archaeologists to peer through the thick forest canopy covering the site and see the buildings hidden beneath.

“In my research, we discovered that what we thought was a fortress, was a whole urban settlement, with elite residences, temple-pyramids and commoner neighbourhoods,” says Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, a Banting postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in Canada, and author of the paper, published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica. 

“I found that this city is like a snapshot of how people built their urban areas and lived in them just before European contact.”