00:00You are lost deep within the jungle in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
00:05There are strange noises all around you, and to make it worse, the sun is setting.
00:11Soon, you'll be alone in the middle of an unknown rainforest.
00:15Guess it was a pretty bad idea to come looking for El Dorado on your own, wasn't it?
00:20You keep walking as fast as you can, when suddenly, wait!
00:24What's this you're seeing? It looks like large stairways made out of stone.
00:29This definitely doesn't look natural, so you take a picture.
00:33Maybe you didn't strike gold, but you might have just found something relevant.
00:39Congratulations, you found Ocumtun, a long-lost Mayan city, hidden 37 miles into the jungle.
00:47The name literally translates to Stone Column.
00:50Stone was probably in at the time, so these guys used a lot of it to build their pyramids, houses, and even ball courts.
00:58If you ever thought that Europeans invented ball games, think twice.
01:02Mayans loved to play ball games for recreational purposes.
01:07Ocumtun is part of a series of other long-lost Mayan cities that are being discovered with the help of new technology nowadays.
01:15We'll talk more about the other ones in a jiffy.
01:17Perhaps the biggest surprise of this one is that it was surrounded by wetlands, which is why the city was built on high ground.
01:26The city was monumental, covering an area of over 120 acres.
01:32That would be as big as 90 football fields right next to each other.
01:37Scientists have found proof that Ocumtun had pyramids of up to 49 feet high,
01:43and that it was likely an important social hub between 250 and 1,000 CE.
01:50This is definitely a game-changer.
01:53But lost Mayan cities began to be unearthed in the 19th century.
01:57Modern technologies, such as LiDAR imaging, help archaeologists see through dense canopies of the forests.
02:03This means that people don't really have to risk getting lost in the tropical jungle like you did at the beginning of this video.
02:10LiDAR works sort of like an X-ray.
02:13It sends out laser beams that can detect any signs of ruins or ancient constructions.
02:19According to space archaeologist Sara Parcek,
02:22satellite imagery has been a key player in discovering ancient cities in South America, Egypt, and other places.
02:29Sara herself spends most of her days scouring images for any signs of where there could have been cities long ago.
02:37She says that more often than not, what happens is that ruins are covered by vegetation, soil, or sand, which makes them super tricky to find.
02:46But thanks to these awesome tools, scientists also made the huge discovery of ancient Mayan causeways, which spread throughout old Mayan territories.
02:57I mean, take a look at these roadways!
02:59You'd expect to see ruins like this in places such as Portugal, England, or the United States.
03:05I'm talking about 130-feet-wide roads painted white to help travelers journey through the nighttime.
03:12Scientists recently unearthed a 110-mile network of roads such as these,
03:17and they think this dates back to before the first registered Mayan highways we've known so far.
03:24These roadways, which sometimes ran over the swampy ground and were even elevated at times, are being called the world's first superhighways.
03:33Even if there is no registry of animal-powered vehicles, it's believed that the Maya used them to travel around a network of possible 964 settlements.
03:43They were built like a huge spiderweb, and from what archaeologists have gathered,
03:48this huge system of roads worked to connect a big system of economic and social interactions between Mayan cities.
03:56This completely debunks the traditional idea that the Mayan pre-classic period, which dates back to 2000 BCE, was made of small, tribal settlements.
04:06Imagine the manpower and engineering ability you need to muster to build something close to these white highways!
04:13Scientists believe that these causeways were built pretty much the same way as the Mayans built their pyramids, with a mixture of mud and quarry stone.
04:22Oh, and using several layers of limestone to make them white!
04:27That's pretty cool, right? But let's take a few steps back for a moment to get some context.
04:33The Mayans were one of the biggest pre-Columbian civilizations living in the Americas.
04:38Until now, experts believe that at its apex, the Mayan civilization consisted of over 40 cities with a population of millions of people.
04:47That's a lot of folks!
04:49Their civilization spanned Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, and Belize.
04:55And they survived mainly on agriculture.
04:58The thing is, the Yucatan Peninsula was an extremely difficult place to grow crops.
05:03So the Mayans had to develop a complex irrigation system in most of their cities.
05:08They built a series of ceremonial buildings, pyramids, and plazas.
05:13The Mayans might have been keen pyramid builders, but they also developed an advanced astronomical system.
05:19With whatever ancient technology they had, they were able to predict the exact location of planets such as Venus and Mars, as well as the exact dates of eclipses.
05:30If you've ever seen examples of ancient Mayan cities, this is Tikal.
05:35Located at the heart of the Guatemalan jungle, Tikal is believed to have been the capital of the ancient Mayan conquest state.
05:42At its height, it was comparable in importance to cities such as London or New York in today's world.
05:48It's composed of a series of complex monuments.
05:51The North Acropolis is one of Tikal's most ancient complexes of monuments.
05:56Built solely by human hands around 350 BCE, it served as the resting place of kings and chiefs.
06:04Its monuments are up to 200 feet high.
06:07Back in the day, the step pyramid temples were painted a beautiful red.
06:12Mayans loved that color.
06:14Today, of course, you'll only see the limestone.
06:19Then there's Chichen Itza.
06:21It's got one of the best preserved pyramids on Earth to date.
06:25Located in Mexico's Yucatan state, this Mayan city is well over 1,500 years old.
06:32At its peak, it was home to 35,000 people.
06:36The site covers four square miles of land.
06:39The highlight is El Castillo, a tremendous step-like temple standing 80 feet above ground.
06:46Its most peculiar feature is that it has 91 steps up each of its four sides, including the upper platform,
06:53which makes for 365 steps, the same number of days as the solar year.
07:02You can see that these folks were a pretty big deal, huh?
07:05That's why nobody can really understand what happened to them.
07:09There's a big lack of evidence on the decline of this almighty empire.
07:13What could have been the cause of their demise?
07:16Was it a drought?
07:17New research in 2017 did bring some new discoveries into the mix.
07:23Using data from a site at Ceibal, located at southwest of Tikal,
07:29scientists analyzed radiocarbon data from ceramics and archaeological excavations
07:34to extract new information about the unexpected demise of this great civilization.
07:40The information shows that instead of a sudden collapse,
07:43the Mayans most likely fell in waves of social instability and political crises.
07:49These events are believed to have deteriorated Mayan city centers
07:53and began causing the dispersion of the Mayan population.
07:57It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes, though.
08:01But hey, recent discoveries are shedding a big light on humanity's past,
08:06not only about the Mayan Empire, but about other long-lost civilizations of South America.
08:12A major recent discovery in Brazil was done using satellite imaging technology
08:17and is also shocking scientists.
08:20Some images from near the Xingu River, also in the Amazon,
08:23suggest that cities of millions of people might have existed inside the jungle
08:28way before our modern civilization ever existed.
08:32I mean, if this doesn't shock you, I don't know what will.
08:37Satellite imagery also detected a network of trenches
08:41dating back to 200 and 1,200 CE in the Bolivian Amazon forest.
08:47These proofs suggest settlements that could have supported around 60,000 people
08:52right in the middle of the Amazon forest.
08:55When researchers from the University of Flora went on ground to check the satellite information,
09:00they were shocked to find several mounds that were accompanied by ditches and geoglyphs.
09:05Archaeologists also found remnants of carefully designed walls centered around plazas,
09:10much like the type of construction done by the ancient Mayans.
09:17That's it for today.
09:18So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:23Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
Comments