Overview
- Teams led by Ivan Šprajc and Mexico’s INAH confirmed late June that a previously unknown Maya city named Minanbé lies under forest in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.
- Field verification followed airborne LiDAR and revealed an urban core of roughly 15–16 hectares with plazas, palatial and religious buildings, terraces and hydraulic channels.
- Archaeologists recorded a Río Bec–style pyramidal temple over 12–13 meters tall and 14 carved monuments, including a glyphic stela that epigraphers read as bearing the calendrical sign 5 Ajaw equivalent to 849 CE.
- The ground campaign required cutting a roughly 5 km path through forest, using ATVs and foot travel, and teams are now conducting detailed photogrammetry, epigraphic study and cataloguing on site.
- The discovery was led by a long‑term Mexican–Slovenian collaboration and was notable for the site’s exceptional preservation, which could reshape understanding of regional settlement and the Terminal Classic decline.