ICYMI, a fifteen-year-old has discovered a whole Mayan city

Do you remember your proudest achievement in school? Was it colouring your geography homework neatly inside the lines? Staying awake in double physics?

Well, a 15-year-old Canadian boy called William Gadoury is here to make you look inferior, because he's just discovered an entire Mayan City in his free time., external

William, who's a huge fan of Mayan history, noticed that a surprising number of Mayan cities were pretty poorly-located and nowhere near rivers for transport or fertile land for farming. He then came up with a theory that Mayan cities were built according to the position of the star constellations that they worshipped.

So, he got to work, matching up 22 Mayan star constellations with 117 known Mayan cities. But while working on matching a 23rd constellation of three stars, William could only find two matching city locations. So where was the third?

He got hold of some high quality satellite images of the area from the Canadian Space Agency, predicted where the missing third city should be - and sure enough, specialists have agreed that he's right on the money. The 'lost' city that the teenager located is the 4th largest Mayan city discovered to date, with 30 confirmed visible structures and a total area of around 100 square km.

And as if to remind us he's a fifteen year old boy, William's named the city 'The Fire Mouth.'

If you're any good at French, you can head here to find out more, external...