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被丛林包围着的玛雅古城卡拉克穆尔遗址，墨西哥坎佩切 Ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Calakmul surrounded by the jungle, Campeche, Mexico (© Alfredo Matus/Shutterstock)

The ruins of a Mayan superpower

Deep in the jungle of southern Mexico lay the ruins of a city that thrived for centuries before it was abandoned more than 1,000 years ago. Calakmul was once one of the two dueling superpowers—along with Tikal—of the Classical Mayan civilization. At its height, around 1,200 years ago, the city of Calakmul had a population of about 50,000 people, but the kingdom as a whole numbered more than 1.5 million. Archaeologists have uncovered 6,750 structures here—the largest is this pyramid temple, called, simply, 'Structure 2.' It's one of the tallest and most massive remaining structures from that highly advanced culture. The ruins of the city proper cover nearly eight square miles in the jungle and the kingdom once ruled over settlements as far as 90 miles away.

All the more amazing, then, that it was apparently lost to history until an American botanist named Cyrus L. Lundell discovered it when flying over the jungle on a survey of the area in December 1931. A few expeditions were sent to explore it over the next few years, but it went largely unstudied until the 1980s. Calakmul is now recognized as one of the most important archeological sites in southern Mexico.

玛雅超级大国的废墟

在墨西哥南部的丛林深处，有一座城市在1000多年前被遗弃之前，已经繁荣了几个世纪。卡拉克穆尔曾是古典玛雅文明的两个决斗超级大国之一，与提卡尔一起。大约1200年前的鼎盛时期，卡拉克穆尔市的人口约为5万人，但王国整体人口超过150万。考古学家在这里发现了6750座建筑——最大的是这座金字塔神庙，简单地说，叫做"结构2"。它是高度先进文化中最高和最具大规模剩余结构之一。这座城市的废墟覆盖了丛林中近8平方英里的面积，王国曾经统治着90英里外的定居点。

更令人惊奇的是，它显然被历史所遗忘，直到1931年12月一位名叫赛勒斯·伦德尔的美国植物学家在一次对该地区的勘测中飞越丛林时发现了它。在接下来的几年里，一些探险队被派去探索它，但直到20世纪80年代它才被广泛研究。卡拉克穆尔现在被认为是墨西哥南部最重要的考古遗址之一。卡拉克穆尔现在被公认为墨西哥南部最重要的考古遗址之一。