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Awesome!

Love this!

Amazing!

I love this story.

Although I understood Mayan lore spoke of gods from outerspace, 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.

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?

On one hand it sounds like fantasy... the kind of connection and theory that only a kid could conceive of: someone who doesn't understand how things really work and tries to make connections between unrelated things, as kids often do. On the other hand, this is a a wondrous, ponderous amount of mathematical calculation and measurement... then and now.

This has me very curious to learn more about ancient Mayan culture and civilization.

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.


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.

For the reasons you gave before (water, natural resources etc.), I think this is more likely.

and perseverance!

This got me thinking of the thread about well-rounded vs. spike for admission to elite colleges. This kid definitely has a spike that makes him stand out from the crowd.

Maybe the Mayans felt compelled to build their cities in a way that respected the celestial order of things? Maybe Maslow's hierarchy of needs was irrelevant when it came to pleasing the Gods.

Regardless, what an incredible accomplishment! Apparently, it is as yet undetermined whether they will excavate. I can't imagine having that under my nose and not wanting to discover it!

Sadly, it seems to be a mistake.

Well, this goes back to why you should get peer review before going to the press...

That said, while the experts may be right, he may be right too. There have been many stories of very intelligent experts denying something could possibly be true, only to have to concede later that it was.

It will be interesting to see how this young man handles the way the experts are refuting his claim. I hope he learns from it and continues to pursue his interest in archaeology.

Expedition required! Possibly the kid and his mentors could post the potential expedition online for crowd-sourced funding.

These are adjacent geo-political areas in close proximity, with a shared border. Therefore this does not seem to debunk the hypothesis of what was found. The primary importance of this location clarification seems to be a matter of which government would be granting (or withholding) expedition rights.