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Experts say a Mayan city discovered by a teenager is ​probably​ just an old cornfield

Update: This post may contain incorrect satellite photos of the alleged Mayan city. See this post for the latest details.

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A Canadian teenager's amazing discovery might go from an archaeological revelation to a cautionary tale in just 48 hours.

On Monday, the tabloid newspaper Journal of Montreal reported that 15-year-old student William Gadoury of Quebec had spotted an ancient Mayan city that was previously lost to history.

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Using a map of Mayan constellations and satellite images in 2014, Gadoury found a correlation between the stars and the locations of 117 known ruins.

But one star, he noticed, had no matching city — so he used satellite imagery provided by the Canadian Space Agency and the private company Ikonos to study that location in the Yucatan Peninsula.

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"A square is not natural," Dr. Armand LaRocque told The Independent. Canadian Space Agency

He discovered a strange geometric shape — a rough square amid the vegetation. So this week Gadoury, geologist Armand LaRocque, and another Canadian scientist announced that it was possibly a complex of 30-odd buildings of Mayan origin.

Experts, however, are now voicing skepticism about that idea.

George Dvorsky, a contributing editor at Gizmodo, reached out to two anthropologists — and both cautioned against jumping to any conclusions about the site without on-the-ground confirmation.

Thomas Garrison, an expert in satellite imagery (also called remote sensing), told Dvorsky it was probably an old cornfield: "I'd guess [the field has] been fallow for 10-15 years. This is obvious to anyone that has spent any time at all in the Maya lowlands."

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David Stuart, an archaeologist and director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin, shared a frank assessment on Facebook.

"The whole thing is a mess — a terrible example of junk science hitting the internet in free-fall," he wrote. "The ancient Maya didn't plot their ancient cities according to constellations. Seeing such patterns is a Rorschach process, since sites are everywhere, and so are stars."

Both scientists commend William on his efforts and enthusiasm but say the media has run away with a specious story.

"To clarify, I don't want to critique the young man mentioned in the story," Stuart said in his post. "He's clearly smart and enthusiastic about archaeology and the Maya. It would be great to channel and develop that interest. What steams me most here is the irresponsibility of 'experts' who sought the media exposure."

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Tech Insider contacted Goudary and LaRocque about the criticisms. We've included LaRocque's comments in a new post, which includes new images.

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