The week's good news: June 4, 2020

It wasn't all bad!

A Mayan ruin.
(Image credit: Takeshi Inomata/Handout via REUTERS)

1. Researchers discover largest and oldest Maya structure

Using a remote sensing method, scientists working in southern Mexico found an ancient structure that has a total volume exceeding Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza. The discovery in Aguada Fénix is the largest and oldest-known structure built by the Maya civilization, Reuters reports. A rectangular elevated platform made of clay and earth, it was built between 1000 and 800 BC, is nearly a quarter-mile wide and nine-tenths of a mile long, and stood 33 to 50 feet high. Researchers used Light Detection and Ranging, or Lidar, to find the structure. This technique utilizes laser light and other data recorded by an aerial system to generate three-dimensional information about the surface of the Earth. University of Arizona archeologist Takeshi Inomata led the research, published Wednesday in Nature, and told Reuters researchers believe the structure was used "for special occasions, possibly tied to calendrical cycles."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.