 Takeshi Onamata, an archaeologist for the National Institute of Statistics and Geography within Mexico, recently made an astonishing discovery in a most unlikely of ways. Before modern technologies, the only real way to investigate an ancient site was to visit the area and either excavate specific places of interest or simply observing said sites from the ground level. However, thanks to modern radar and lidar systems, the sites can now be scanned and then observed in depth from afar. However, to implement such technologies on a certain site of interest is incredibly expensive, something Takeshi knows all too well. After investing $62,000 on a lidar scan of an area a mere 35 miles in size, he unfortunately returned no new discoveries in the area. This initially disappointed Takeshi, but a few months later, after researching previous investigations in the area, he was incredibly excited when he came across a previous lidar scan, one originally made by Mexican official studies of the area. He found a treasure trove available for free online. Just in 2011, it covered an astonishing 4,440-mile square and covered the areas of Tabasco and Chiapas, in which Takeshi has since discovered an additional set of 27 ancient ruins, all previously hidden within this public access map. This not only expands our understanding of these claimed Mayan ruins, but also expands the breadth of this astonishing now lost civilization's reach, and indeed the original size of their mega metropolis, which covers many hundreds of miles square, and is now estimated to have once been inhabited by at least 10 million individuals. Takeshi learned about the map via Rodrigo Leendo, an archaeologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The ruins stood out to Inomata immediately, and now, thanks to his work, we have a number of once lost but now found ruins, all of which demand further exploration if we are ever to unravel the mysteries of our past. We can see a much better picture of the entire society, Takeshi told the media. The stuff he is finding is crucial for our understanding of how Mayan civilizations developed, added Arlen Chase, an archaeologist at Pomona College. We will keep you posted on any further developments regarding these new discoveries, especially any future excavations. It is a find, a lost civilization, and indeed an area of archaeological interest and intrigue, which we find highly compelling.