I always thought that people built cities at locations where they found water for consumption and transportation, wild foods to forage, places to grow crops, abundant hunting grounds, and something to construct shelter with.
The idea that people studied the sky, mapped out the stars, and then superimposed the star-map over the earth and used that to determine the locations of their cities is mind-boggling.
This was my first thought as well. While it is remarkable that the teenager discovered the location of a Mayan city, I was much more impressed with the fact that a civilization might have planned out where all it's cities were going to be based on constellations.
Or (since the article spoke of Mayan constellations) did the Mayans build the cities first, then study the sky and map out only those stars which seemed to correspond to the earthly map of their cities?
I agree that it seems like the cities must have come first. After I read the article, my first thought was that maybe the Mayans built temples in locations that corresponded to the constellations and then cities grew up around them. However, your idea sounds even more reasonable. Either way is still mind-boggling when you consider that the Mayans couldn't actually "see" those cities or any of their land from the perspective of space (with satellites imagery) like we can. Wow. I just can't get my mind around it.
