Did a teen discover a lost Mayan city?

William Gadoury, a 15-year-old from Saint-Jean-de-Matha, hypothesized that Mayans might have built their cities so they lined up with major constellations. In investigating his theory, he found that lots of cities seemed to line up with bright stars, but one major constellation seemed to be missing a settlement. When Gadoury got the Canadian Space Agency to turn a satellite over to that remote area, he spotted what seem to be man-made structures.

Gadoury’s enthusiasm is wonderful, and he did a neat experiment. But how much can we conclude from his informal findings? Not much. There’s a reason we didn’t cover this story when it started going viral Tuesday: Without a formal, peer-reviewed study of the stars-and-cities hypothesis (and even with one), it’s a bit reckless to run with the conclusion that it has been proven. And now many experts have chimed in to express skepticism.

For starters, the idea that matching up constellations to cities proves Mayan intent might be misguided.

“The Maya area was so densely occupied in Classic Maya times that many years ago a well known archaeologist, Ed Kurjack, told me that the area looked much like the Ohio Valley, denuded of trees and full of towns that were fairly close to one another,” Susan Milbrath, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told Wired. “So at any given point you would be likely to find an archaeological site.”