Using Google Earth and a simple star chart, 15 year old Canadian teen, William Gadoury has discovered what he believes to be the lost ruins of an ancient Mayan City. Based in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, he may just be right!
“The Mayans were extremely good builders, but they often built in places that made little practical sense — far from rivers, far from fertile areas,” – he explained to CBC News.
As many scientists and historians have discussed, he believes that the Mayans built their cities in correspondence with the stars.
This was compared to 22 Mayan constellations where ruins have already been found. As noted, 117 Mayan ruins do in fact match their ancient star charts.
This all started when he realized that out of all of these constellations, the 23rd didn’t seem to have a match. He decided that if all the previous findings were anything to go by, there must be a lost city out there!
Taking his research a step further, he referred to Google Earth images to see if he could spot any man made structure between the Yucatan vegetation.
Eventually, he spotted what appeared to look a lot like the outlines of pyramid platforms (which were the structural style of the Mayans) in a lost Mayan city.
Winning at his school’s science fair for his achievement, he earned a trip to a conference organized by the Canadian Space Agency.
Presenting his theory to their liaison officer Daniel Delisle, he realized that Gadoury was on to something special. Allowing him access to Google Earth’s high definition images, he would perhaps be able to corroborate his theory.
These images did in fact match up with Gadoury’s previous suggestions, adding more weight to his findings, named K’aak Chi, or Mouth Of Fire.
“The satellite image just gives us a horizon of information — we really need to go underneath [the forest canopy] to see if there’s anything,” Delisle said.
“We are pretty sure that there are some features hidden there … I think there’s a high potential of finding a city.”
Who knows what we may next discover?