Lost Maya City Discovered Using 327-Year Old Letter

Archaeologists have recently discovered the location of Sak-Bahlán — the last city of the Lacandon rebels of Chiapas — in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. The city had been lost in the jungle following its abandonment 300 years ago, and had eluded both previous expeditions and (fortunately) most of the 17th- and 18th-century Spanish conquest.

The independent outpost of the rebels (known as the "land of the white jaguar") was finally discovered thanks to the use of Geographic Information Systems predictive modeling.

"It was the most arduous field trip I’ve ever had in my life, but, finally, we found the archaeological evidence, right at the spot I had marked," Josuhé Lozada Toledo, National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) Chiapas Center specialist, said in a translated statement.

The Maya people group known as the Lacandon lost their capital, Lacam-Tún (translated as "great rock"), to the Spanish in 1586, and retreated to Sak-Bahlán for just over 100 years of independent existence, according to historical records. The group lived undisturbed during that time, even as the Spanish searched for the site. But in 1695, Spanish Friar Pedro de la Concepcion found the stronghold by happenstance, and the Spanish soon took it over and renamed it Our Lady of Sorrows.

By 1721, however, anyone still living at the site had abandoned it, leaving it lost to the jungle of what is now the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. Efforts to relocate the site had since proven fruitless — until now.

The new effort to locate the stronghold relied on predictive modeling based on information from historical documents — including a letter by Spanish friar Diego de Rivas written in 1698, which described a journey taken by a group of soldiers from the site.

Lozada Toledo and archaeologists Brent Woodfill and Yuko Shiratori knew the city was located on a plain surrounded by a bend in the Lacantún River. Lozada Toledo used GIS to reconstruct pre-Hispanic and historical communication routes of various Maya groups, supplementing the models with further layers of data.

Information from Friar de Rivas’ letter showed that the soldiers left Sak-Bahlán and walked four days to the Lacantún River. They then sailed for two days to arrive at El Encuentro de Cristo (where the tributary joins the Pasión River), and left their canoes to walk to Lake Petén Itzá in Guatemala.

"From those places mentioned, which I had georeferenced, I made a conversion of the four days mentioned, from some point on the Lacantún River to Sak-Bahlán," Lozada Toledo said.

After accounting for a number of variables — including vegetation layers and how much each person was carrying — Lozada Toledo mapped an approximate range of where Sak-Bahlán should be located.

The team discovered a site near the Mexico-Guatemala border full of stone structures, tools, ceramics, and even a Spanish church, Lozada Toledo told Spanish-language Milenio — evidence that matched up with documents about the former Lacandon city. They’d found it.