A joint effort between researchers and a local Indigenous Tz'utujil community revealed that a still-intact Maya settlement is nestled below a volcanic lake in Guatemala.
Earth.com reported on the breakthrough study published in March in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology.
The ruins have been hidden under the volcanic Lake Atitlán in the nation's highlands. A survey of the area revealed platforms, house foundations, and monuments preserved deep under the water's surface.
Lake Atitlán's unique geography allows for such phenomena. As Earth.com noted, it lies within a volcanic caldera — or cauldron-like hollow — that emerged after a large eruption. There, water was able to cover over the settlement without reducing it to ruins.
An important part of the researchers' efforts was pinpointing where to look for the settlement. A 2022 mission had revealed 2.2 square miles of potential sites. Divers canvassed those areas to find the submerged site.
Once there, they found numerous features indicating a previous ground floor at a depth of about 51 feet below the present-day surface. They dated the settlement to somewhere between 350 BC and AD 250.
Finds like these are becoming increasingly commonplace due to extreme weather. While Lake Atitlán has its own unique geography and was the site of intentional exploration, droughts in countries like Iraq are leading to unplanned discoveries of hidden burial sites.
While these discoveries can be a boon for historians and archaeologists, there are, of course, concerns about the long-term impacts of droughts and, conversely, rising water levels.
There are also sensitivities over transforming these sacred sites and sources of memory for the sake of history or archaeology. Thus, collaborating with the Tz'utujil community from the beginning was critical to this study.
It's also why researchers decided to return all artifacts to the site rather than display them. There were other anticolonial moves, like not renaming the ruins.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 The researchers are far from done in the area, as Earth.com noted. There's evidence that there may be a larger network of long-lost settlements nearby.
The hope is that by cooperating with the local community, the team can pursue further exploration while preserving trust and reducing harm.
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