Mexican archaeologists have discovered the ancient Mayan city of “Ocomtún” in the Balamkú ecological reserve in Campeche, in the southeast of the country.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reported the discovery of the city of Ocomtún (“stone column” in Yucatec Mayan) thanks to aerial images and LiDAR technology – a recent new technique for scanning the ground and finding hidden structures – of the area.
According to the note, Ocomtún includes large pyramidal buildings more than 15 metres high, stone columns, three plazas with buildings and other structures, with a core covering more than 50 hectares, and is hypothesised to have been an important centre of the Central Lowlands during the Classic period (250 – 1000 AD).
The ‘stone column’ was so named because of the number of cylindrical stone monoliths scattered throughout the site, said Slovenian-born archaeologist Ivan Ṡprajc, who is leading the research.
The finding, according to INAH, was the result of the first field season of the project ‘Expanding the archaeological panorama of the Maya Central Lowlands’, which seeks to expand knowledge of an extensive area practically unknown to archaeology.