Tulane researchers uncovered over 6,500 Maya structures in Mexico using lidar, revealing a complex settlement landscape and challenging previous assumptions about the Maya civilization’s urban and rural distribution.

WIRED spoke with the researchers responsible for the discovery of Valeriana, a lost Maya city in the middle of the jungle of Campeche.

East of the town of Dos Lagunas, past the major highway cutting through Mexico’s south, the forest rises up in a dense wall of grasping roots, spindly branches and veils of brown and green. Beyond it lies the ruins of an old Maya city,