Oh man, the story about a 15 year old discovering a lost Maya city is circulating the web. I feel bad for the kid because he's obviously enthusiastic about learning the history of the Maya. But from the sound of the article neither a Mayanist or a remote sensing expert was consulted before the news article broke. It turns out the images being passed around are nothing more than fields in the middle of the Yucatan jungle. I really hope the backlash against this kid, especially with people like David Stuart weighing in, doesn't discourage him from continuing to pursue Maya studies.

I was actually able to easily find the area which is near the Laguna el Civalon and Laguna el Amapola. This area is quite close to the Classic period cities of Tikal and Calakmul so it would be unsurprising if there were Classic period ruins in the area. What is most likely in the area are colonial Kejach settlements, one of which is Chunchib located near the Laguna el Chunchib. Chunchub was one of the stopping points of Francisco Ursua's conquest of the Itza Maya in 1697. I couldn't find any archaeological work that was done in the area, but it's not an unknown area to historians and archaeologists. diser55 identified a report from 2009 that mentions structures found in the area during a survey.

If you're interested in just how many Maya sites there are, I recommend taking a look at Mayamap.org. You can find the Kejach area pretty easily west/southwest of Calakmul and it is blank, but like I said it's because no seems to have done any excavations or surveys in the area.

I also want to mention Ucumu's post on /r/badhistory which he wrote shortly after the first news article was submitted, as well as Xnipek's post in the /r/news topic itself.

Also somewhat history related, Civilization VI announcment trailer. I'm disappointed that there was no pre-Columbian or sub-Saharan history featured.