Sprawling Lost City From 600 Years Ago Revealed

An archaeologist has revealed a sprawling, lost 15th-century city in southern Mexico at a site that was long thought to have been merely a garrison for soldiers. Guiengola, which was built by the indigenous Zapotec people, is located in the south of the state of Oaxaca, some 17 miles from the pacific coastline. Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis of McGill University in Montreal, Canada revealed the true extent of forest-covered Guiengola using a laser-based scanning technique, flying over the site in an airplane. His study has revealed that the fortified city covers a whopping 360 hectares and sported more than 1,100 structures—including temples, ball courts and different neighborhoods for the commoners and the elite—and 2.5 miles of walls. "Because the city is only between 500 and 600 years old, it is amazingly well preserved," Ramón Celis said in a statement. "You can walk there in the jungle, and you find that houses are still standing—you can see the doors, the hallways, the fences that split them from other houses."

According to Ramón Celis, evidence suggests that the fortified city was abandoned just before the Spanish arrived in Mexico—with its residents relocating to nearby Tehuantepec, a small city where their descendants still live. By the end of the 15th century, Ramón Celis told Newsweek, the Zapotecs had managed to both gain almost total control of Oaxaca's Pacific Coat, and had resisted the aggressive Late Postclassic expansion of the Mexicas (the Aztec Empire). "This was especially remarkable following a lengthy, seven-month siege, led by Aztec emperor Ahuizotl, at Guiengola," he noted. "After securing this region of southern Mesoamerica, the Zapotecs no longer needed to inhabit this city. "While living in a mountainous area had its advantages, access to running water and more fertile land were likely more important for a large population, and the site of Tehuantepec had this advantage over Guiengola." Guiengola, he added, is "like a city frozen in time, before any of the deep cultural transformations brought by the Spanish arrival had taken place." The archaeologist says that his fascination with the fortified city is one that was fostered back in his youth. "My mother's family is from the region of Tehuantepec, which is around 20 km [12 miles] from the site, and I remember them talking about it when I was a child," Ramón Celis explained. "It was one of the reasons that I chose to go into archaeology."

The technique that Ramón Celis used to scan the city is known as Light Detection and Ranging, or "LiDAR" for short. Akin to a light-based version of sonar, it uses pulses of laser beams to produce detailed topographic maps of the terrain. "Although you could reach the site using a footpath, it was covered by a canopy of trees," the archaeologist explained. "Until very recently, there would have been no way for anyone to discover the full extent of the site without spending years on the ground walking and searching. "We were able to do it within two hours by using remote sensing equipment and scanning from a plane." Based on his scans, Ramón Celis mapped out the structures that remain in the city—and inferred how they were used based on the artifacts found in given locations. This even allowed him to determine how power was distributed across Guiengola—for structures such as ritual ball courts and temples would only have been used by the elite. This is only the start of the analysis—with the archaeologist hoping that future studies of Guiengola will provide fresh insights in the Zapotecs' social and political organization, which may shine a light on their relationship with the Spanish. "Currently, I'm planning my fourth field season, during which my team and I will cover all the approximately 1,170 structures in the LiDAR scan, which will take us a few years," Ramón Celis said, stressing that this work will involve further remote sensing, rather than physical excavations of the site. "This will allow me to understand how strong the connections of the Zapotecs were to their homeland and to what degree they were developing their own identity." Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com. Update 01/30/25, 12:57 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a locator map and additional comments from Ramón Celis.

Reference

Ramón Celis, P. G. (2024). Airborne lidar at Guiengola, Oaxaca: Mapping a Late Postclassic Zapotec city. Ancient Mesoamerica. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536124000166