15-Year-Old Canadian Discovers Lost Mayan City

It’s likely this story will help one teenager get into the college of his dreams.

William Gadoury, a 15-year-old from Saint-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, recently discovered a lost Mayan city, the BBC reports.

How might a teenager find a lost city that has eluded experts for years, you might ask? According to the report, Gadoury compared star charts from the Mayans with satellite images on Google Earth. Gadoury took the star maps and overlaid them on the Google images of the Yucatan Peninsula. In 22 of the star maps, Gadoury found the stars corresponded to major Mayan cities, but in the 23rd constellation, Gadoury found something was amiss.

In the 23rd constellation, three stars were visible, but there were only two ancient cities discovered by researchers thus far. A city that should be on the Mexico-Belize border was missing. After extensive research, Gadoury was able to determine that a city should be where the star is located on the constellation map. Gadoury took his findings to Dr. Armand Larocque at the University of New Brunswick. Larocque confirmed Gadoury had indeed found a major city with an 86-meter pyramid.

Gadoury has named the city K’ÀAK ‘CHI’. The name means, “Mouth of Fire.”

Scientists all over are praising the teenager for his findings, with researchers at the Canadian Space Agency saying his work is “exceptional,” and even drawing praise from internet users everywhere.

Now, it’s expected other researchers will use a similar tactic to try to pinpoint more lost cities and could lead us to an even greater understanding of this lost civilization.