OAXACA, MEXICO—According to a Newsweek report, Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis of McGill University and his colleagues spotted the remains of more than 1,000 structures built by the Zapotec in southern Mexico between 500 and 600 years ago during an aerial survey employing lidar equipment. “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,” Ramón Celis said. Known as Guiengola, the fortified site was previously thought to have been a garrison for soldiers. Ramón Celis explained that the city was likely abandoned shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico. Descendants of the residents of Guiengola still live about 12 miles away, in the small city of Tehuantepec. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Ancient Mesoamerica. For more on the Zapotec, go to "Zapotec Power Rites."
