The newly discovered structures provide game-changing evidence that the imperial power of Teotihuacan exerted considerable influence on Tikal, an ancient Maya capital, as part of a campaign of conquest.

But a startling recent discovery by the Pacunam Lidar Initiative, a research consortium involving a Brown University anthropologist, has ancient Mesoamerican scholars across the globe wondering whether they know Tikal as well as they think.

Using light detection and ranging software, or lidar, Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, and Thomas Garrison, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered that what was long assumed to be an area of natural hills a short walk away from Tikal’s center was actually a neighborhood of ruined buildings that had been designed to look like those in Teotihuacan, the largest and most powerful city in the ancient Americas.

Houston said their lidar analysis, coupled with a subsequent excavation by a team of Guatemalan archaeologists led by Edwin Roman Ramirez, has prompted new insights on, and big questions about, Teotihuacan’s influence on the Maya civilization.

«What we had taken to be natural hills actually were shown to be modified and conformed to the shape of the citadel — the area that was possibly the imperial palace — at Teotihuacan,» Houston said. «Regardless of who built this smaller-scale replica and why, it shows without a doubt that there was a different level of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan than previously believed.»

The results, including lidar images and a summary of excavation findings, were published on Tuesday, Sept. 28 in Antiquity.

Tikal and Teotihuacan were radically different cities, Houston said. Tikal, a Maya city, was fairly populous but relatively small in scale — «you could have walked from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day, maybe two» — while Teotihuacan had all the marks of an empire. Though little is known about the people who founded and governed Teotihuacan, it’s clear that, like the Romans, their influence extended far beyond their metropolitan center: Evidence shows they shaped and colonized countless communities hundreds of miles away.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Brown University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.