Overview
- INAH‑authorized Slovenian–Mexican fieldwork this week confirmed Minanbé as a roughly 15‑hectare, well‑preserved Maya urban centre in Campeche with plazas, palaces, hydraulic channels and a Río Bec–style pyramidal temple about 13–14 metres high.
- The site was located from airborne LiDAR imagery and reached after clearing a roughly five‑kilometre jungle route with local workers, then documented on foot and by ATV using photogrammetry to create 3D models of monuments.
- Archaeologists recorded 14 carved stelae and altars including Stela 1, which shows a decapitation scene and bears a calendrical sign read as 5 Ajaw corresponding to 849 CE, and another monument with a Long Count fragment likely from the late seventh century.
- Several altars and monuments show deliberate breaking or defacement that researchers say could reflect incursions, internal conflict, or post‑abandonment modification, but interpretations remain preliminary and require further analysis.
- The discovery caps Ivan Šprajc’s multi‑decade mapping of the Central Maya Lowlands and, because Minanbé shows no evidence of modern looting, it offers a rare, well‑protected site for studying Late and Terminal Classic social and political change.