On June 22, 2026, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History announced the discovery of Minanbé — an intact, unlooted Maya city deep in the jungles of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Campeche, at the base of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Indigenous civilization in this area was known for building monumental cities like Chichén Itzá, Palenque, and Tulum. The city’s name is derived from the Yucatec Maya words mina’an (there is no) and be (path) because of the difficulty of accessing the ruins, which include pyramids, palace complexes, and carved stone monuments.
Undisturbed for a Thousand Years
According to Ivan Šprajc, leader of the Mexican and Slovenian research team, Minanbé sat undisturbed for more than a thousand years. It is the first unlooted city this team has found in three years of searching. Šprajc, from the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences, has focused on mapping the Central Mayan Lowlands. This area was home to 9 to 11 million people during the Late Classic period (600 to 900 AD).Maya history stretches back to 1500 BC, when the people lived in villages, farming beans, maize, and squash. By around the third century AD, they’d begun building stone cities that included ball courts, pyramid temples, plazas, and palaces.
- Huge Lost Maya City Has Emerged From the Jungle in Mexico
- Massive Research Initiative Reveals Truth about Ancient Coastal Maya
LiDAR imaging of the area revealed the ruins spread over 15 hectares of jungle known as Minanbé. (Quintín Hernández/INAH)
To update maps of Chactún, a major Maya center first reported 13 years ago, the team collected airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) data before beginning a land survey. After local workers helped clear a three-mile path through the jungle, the researchers endured hours in the tangled heat of the tropical rainforest before sighting the central pyramid. Šprajc, a specialist in finding Maya ruins, admits that he was amazed when they approached the site:
“Compared to other places where we conducted surface surveys, access here turned out to be much more difficult; however, in the last three years, this is the first one we found intact; there are no looters’ trenches. It was a great surprise for us.”
A carved limestone monument remains in situ at the newly discovered Maya city of Minanbé in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Campeche, Mexico. (Quintín Hernández/INAH)
The Mystery Messages in Hieroglyphic Text
Olguin was especially interested in Stela 1. There, a figure wields a knife to decapitate another person. A sign shows the date 5 Ajaw (849 AD). “This is an important clue because we can assume that the entire group of monuments, or some of them, were erected during that period of the Terminal Classic, close to the abandonment of the sites in the region, which occurred in the 10th century AD,” he said.
- An Ancient Maya City Founded by a God and Conquered by a Death-Cheating Despot
- Astonishing Scale of Ancient Maya Metropolis Revealed by Laser Scans
Stela 1, where a character wields a kind of knife or axe to decapitate an individual, the record of the date 5 ajaw, 849 A.D. is observed. (INAH)
Some of the round altars and one rectangular altar were intentionally modified, according to Šprajc. Monument 6, which is broken, has hieroglyphic cartouches on its sides and the figure of a ruler with a feathered headdress, a pectoral with trilobed elements, wristbands, and necklaces on its front. The hieroglyphic text contains part of a Long Count date, likely from the late 7th century AD, making it the oldest in the area.
The Period of Profound Change in the Maya World
Archaeologist Quintín Hernández notes that the mysterious series of stelae 'in a row' at the southern end of a causeway connecting the central and northeast sectors of the site sparked discussion and analysis. The team called in the project’s epigrammatist, Octavior Esparza Olguin, who identified key elements despite the erosion of the limestone surfaces. He believes that the text has many clues:
“The evidence places Minanbé in a period of profound change in the Maya world, just before the collapse that led to the abandonment of many major cities in the Lowlands.”
Šprajc agrees;
“It was the prelude to this notorious collapse of the classic Maya civilization in the ninth and 10th centuries,” he said.
Every city had its own king and dynasty, and each city competed for resources. If rival areas attempted a land grab or sought to take over property used to grow corn and beans, they might deface monuments to control that community's memory. Much of the site remains buried under mounds of earth that will need more people to assist the excavation.
One of the tallest structures, a pyramidal temple that exceeds 13 m in height, has characteristics of the Río Bec style. (Vitan Vujanović/INAH)
A Sophisticated Temple Complex Confirmed in a Ground Survey
The ground survey team confirmed a 15-hectare urban center with plazas, palace buildings, religious structures, terraces, and wetlands with water channels. The tallest building was a temple pyramid, more than 40 feet tall, built in the Rio Bec style of fine masonry and moldings, popular during the Late Classic period. The temple boasts a stela, a freestanding monument of carved stone with visible symbols. The researchers found 14 stelae and altars at the site, showing that it was an important city during the Late Classic period.
The Important Nuance
The discoveries at Minanbé are located within an agricultural area that reached its peak during the Late Classic period, a time of agricultural production and the trade of surplus foods, according to Ivan Šprajc. As researchers investigate Minanbé in the future, they will explore possible incursions by groups from the northern Yucatán Peninsula who disrupted the abandoned city's power structure.
Top Image: Aerial shot of Calakmul-style jungle ruins with visible structure. Calakmul pyramid rising above the jungle canopy in Campeche, Mexico. Source: Pavel Kirillov/CC BY-SA 2.0
By Ramsey Hardin
References
Anderson, Sonja. “Deep in the Mexican Jungle, Archaeologists Discovered a Lost Maya City That May Yield Clues About the Civilization Just Before It Collapsed.” Smithsonian Magazine. June 26, 2026.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deep-in-the-mexican-jungle-archaeologists-discovered-a-lost-maya-city-that-may-yield-clues-about-the-civilization-just-before-it-collapsed-180989030/.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., ed. The Ancient Maya of Campeche. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005.
Canuto, Marcello A., et al. “Ancient Lowland Maya Complexity as Revealed by Airborne Laser Scanning of Northern Guatemala.” Science 361, no. 6409 (2018): eaau0137.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau0137
Coe, Michael D., and Stephen Houston. The Maya. 10th ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
Demarest, Arthur A. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Lee, Gayoung. “Archaeologists Hacked Through Miles of Jungle and Found an Intact Lost Maya City.” Gizmodo. June 30, 2026.https://gizmodo.com/archaeologists-hacked-through-miles-of-jungle-and-found-an-intact-lost-maya-city-2000779153.
Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens. 2nd ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2008.
Milligan, Mark. “Ancient Maya City Found Intact in Remote Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.” HeritageDaily. June 23, 2026.https://www.heritagedaily.com/2026/06/ancient-maya-city-found-intact-in-remote-calakmul-biosphere-reserve/158429.
Sharer, Robert J., and Loa P. Traxler. The Ancient Maya. 6th ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
UNESCO World Heritage Center. Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche.https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1061/.
Webster, David. The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
World Monuments Fund. Calakmul. https://www.wmf.org/project/calakmul
.jpg){kind=link}