LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It uses laser pulses fired from aircraft that bounce off the ground and back to the aircraft, revealing the relief of the ground area being studied. Previous Mexico News Report articles have reported how LiDAR was used in the discovery of a lost Maya city in Campeche state (Valeriana) and in the discovery that the Zapotec fortress of Guiengola was much larger than previously thought.
Another archaeological discovery made with LiDAR is the Mayan city of Minanbé, like Valeriana, also in the state of Campeche.
Minanbé, which had been hidden for a millennium, is located in the jungle in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.
As reported in Smithsonian Magazine, “No old logging paths lead to this site—unlike others in the jungle—says excavation leader Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist who specializes in finding ancient Maya sites, in a translated statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). It was very difficult to access, he says. Researchers named the place ‘Minanbé,’ a combination of Yucatec Mayan words meaning, roughly, ‘there is no road’.”
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In case you were wondering, Ivan Šprajc is from Slovenia, the same country U.S. First Lady Melania Trump is from.
Slovenia in red. Source: freeworldmaps.net
Minanbé was explored after a LiDar scan in 2023.
From the Smithsonian Magazine: “After examining an aerial lidar scan of Minanbé’s roughly 40 acres, archaeologists Atasta Flores Esquivel, Israel Chato López, Quintín Hernández Gómez and Vitan Vujanović explored it from the ground. They hacked through three miles of jungle with machetes to get there. What they found was a city composed of urban plazas surrounded by palaces, religious buildings and terraces flanked by water channels.”
According to Dr. Šprajc, “To reach the site, we had to clear a trail with machetes and chainsaws before walking another 6km [kilometers] through the jungle.”
Back to the Smithsonian Magazine: “Minanbé’s tallest building was a temple pyramid standing more than 40 feet tall—three or four stories. Vujanović says in the statement that it was built in the Río Bec style: a type of Maya architecture characterized by fine masonry and moldings, popular during the Late Classic period.”
“The temple boasts a stela, a freestanding monument of carved stone, which Vujanović says is the first he’s found with uneroded symbols. In all, the researchers found 14 stelae and altars at the site, suggesting it was an important city during the Late Classic period, per the statement.”
A Minanbé stele. Source: Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
“The researchers took hundreds of photos of the altars and stelae, then sent them to epigraphist Octavio Esparza Olguín for examination. Olguín says in the statement that one of the stelae depicts a figure decapitating another with a knife or ax, and it’s carved with the date 849 C.E. He says this probably means all the carved monuments were made around that time—near the collapse of the Maya civilization in the Lowlands.”
“Researchers found round and rectangular altars. One boasts a carving of a ruler wearing a feathered headdress, a decorated chest, bracelets and necklaces. An engraved Maya calendrical element suggests the altar was carved in the late seventh century, making it the oldest of Minanbé’s monuments.”
I wonder when this place will be open to tourists? It will probably be awhile.