Angamuco Rivaled Manhattan Building Count

The ancient city of Angamuco in present-day Mexico lay hidden beneath dense vegetation for centuries before archaeologists identified the site in 2007 and mapped it extensively with LiDAR technology in 2012. The scans revealed more than 40,000 building foundations, roughly as many structures as modern Manhattan packed into a much smaller area. Angamuco was built by the Purépecha civilization, which developed one of the largest states in pre-Columbian Mexico and became a major rival of the Aztec Empire.

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