(Canadian Space Agency)
William Gadoury believed there was a lost city which correlated to a star (Canadian Space Agency)

News outlets breathlessly reported a Canadian teenager’s discovery of a lost Mayan city in Central America yesterday.

William Gadoury, 15, combined Mayan astronomy and modern satellite imaging via Google Earth and found a ‘forgotten’ city. The city was a missing ‘star’ from a constellation of three stars he believed were used to map settlements.

thumbnail for post ID 5871894 Boy, 15, discovers forgotten ancient village

In hundreds of years of scholarship, no other scientist had ever found such a correlation.

We suppose that last line in the original English-language report by The Telegraph should have sent alarm bells ringing.

It certainly did for a number of people who do that sort of thing for a living.

William Gadoury discovered the village using satellite images and Google Maps (Picture: Canadian Space Agency)
William Gadoury ‘discovered’ the village using satellite images and Google Maps (Picture: Canadian Space Agency)

University of Southern California anthropologist Thomas Garrison was quoted in an update of Gizmodo’s coverage of the story as saying the Mayan ‘ruins’ were in fact a cornfield.

‘Ground-truthing is the key to remote sensing research,’ he said.

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‘You have to be able to confirm what you are identifying in a satellite image or other type of scene. In this case, the rectilinear nature of the feature and the secondary vegetation growing back within it are clear signs of a relic milpa.

‘I’d guess its been fallow for 10-15 years.’

David Stuart, an anthropologist from The Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin, was more blunt in his response.

Central America, Belize, Cayo; Chiquibul Forest Reserve, Caracol archaeological site, plaza A showing structures A4, A5 and A6 . The largest building with the central staircase is Structure A6 - the Temple of the Wooden Lintel.
(Picture: Getty Images)

‘This current news story of an ancient Maya city being discovered is false.

‘Whole thing is a mess – a terrible example of junk science hitting the internet in free-fall.

Ancient mosaic found in Turkey shows skeleton drinking wine and reads 'be cheerful, enjoy your life’ Ancient mosaic found in Turkey reads ‘be cheerful, enjoy your life’

‘The ancient Maya didn’t plot their ancient cities according to constellations… it’s an old fallow cornfield, or milpa.’

If that wasn’t enough to thoroughly debunk the claims, UC San Diego archaeologist thought he’d mention that he and his team have, by coincidence, been working on that exact area.

One of the images, he says, is of the Laguna El Civalón, and the feature in the other image is a dried-up swamp.

We have no doubt William Gadoury will go on to do great things, but it seems for now, in this case, he was unfortunately mistaken.

H/T Snopes

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