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(Image: LIVESCIENCE)

The remains of 41 villages surround Izapa, Mexico, the home of the kingdom between 700BC and 100BC.They are described as a series of "remarkable" suburbs, reports Live Science.Archeologists have now determined Izapa was not a stand-alone city, but surrounded by these towns with layouts that mirrored the ancient capital.Robert Rosenwig, an archeologist at SUNY Albany, said: "The consistency is remarkable. This is a tremendous amount of coordination within the kingdom."

He added: "The fact that this structure was replicated at the lower-order centers, which are not that far apart, meant that there was this sense of polity in the Izapa kingdom, and being a member of this entailed some specific ritual activities that would have happened periodically."

Oswaldo Chinchilla, a fellow archeologist at Yale University, added: "We knew that Izapa was a major site of monumental scale, but this article provides tangible evidence about the hinterland settlements in the region."Izapa emerges as the political and religious centre of an early polity, whose early dating makes it significant for the study of the origins of the state in Mesoamerica."The Izapa Kingdom was famed for its pyramids and other stunning monuments.The towns were discovered by archeologists using a lidar, a remote-sensing technique.

(Image: LIVESCIENCE)

Initially, Rosenwig surveyed around 20 sq miles and found nine small settlements.He then expanded the search, before he found the 41 settlements covering an area of 225 sq miles.It is believed the largest sites held a population of around 2,000 residents.