Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered a mysterious underground structure with murals hidden beneath a Mayan ball court.
The team discovered the building during excavations. Ball FieldA stadium for ceremonial ball games played by the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples.
“We found parts of an earlier building where the walls were plastered, but further excavations will be needed to determine the shape of the building underneath and its function,” he said. Ivan SpreitzHe is an archaeologist at the Slovenian Institute of Anthropology and Spatial Studies and head of the excavations.
“This discovery is clearly a very important structure, since ball courts are typically only found at major Maya sites that were centers of regional political organization,” Sprike told LiveScience in an email. According to a translated statement from Mexico’s National Archaeological Institute, the structure dates to the Early Classic period (200 to 600 AD) and is covered with a layer of painted stucco. National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Previously, Spreich and his colleagues used lidar, a technology that fires millions of laser pulses from an aircraft, to survey a large area of the Maya lowlands in the Mexican state of Campeche. These pulses bounce off the ground and return to machines inside the aircraft, allowing the researchers to create a topographical map.
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“We have discovered several ancient Maya settlements, including the remains of dwellings and temple pyramids,” Spryck said. In 2023, the team will The lost Mayan city of Ocomtun It is home to several large pyramids from the Classic Maya period (c. 200-900 A.D.). The newly discovered site is in a previously unexplored area south of Ocomtun, he said.
Additionally, the team discovered additional archaeological remains, including a plaza, a 52-foot-tall (16-meter-tall) pyramid, and a rectangular cistern, the release said. At the top of the pyramid, they found several offerings, including a ceramic vessel, a ceramic animal leg, possibly an armadillo, and a chert knife or spear tip.
The offerings were “placed on top of the temple during the Late Postclassic period (the last centuries before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors)” between 1250 and 1524, Spreich said.
By the Late Postclassic, the central Maya lowlands were already in political turmoil. But people were struggling with “overpopulation, soil depletion, Climate Change “(Long-term drought) and devastating war,” he said.
“These offerings were made by small, poor groups of people long after most Classic Maya settlements had been abandoned.[s] They were still walking around and leaving offerings on or near their ancestors’ structures,” Spreich said.
