Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramid has 2,000-year-old floral offerings, discovered by archaeologists

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient people of Teotihuacan wrapped bunches of flowers into beautiful bouquets, laid them beneath a jumble of wood and set the pile ablaze.

Now, archaeologists have found the remains of those surprisingly well-preserved flowers in a tunnel snaking beneath a pyramid of the ancient city, located northeast of what is now Mexico City. 

The pyramid itself is immense and would have stood 75 feet (23 meters) tall when it was first built, making it taller than the Sphinx of Giza from ancient Egypt.

The Teotihuacan pyramid is part of the “Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” which was built in honour of Quetzalcoatl, a serpent god who was worshipped in Mesoamerica. 

Archaeologists found the bouquets 59 feet (18 m)  below ground in the deepest part of the tunnel, said Sergio Gómez-Chávez, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) who is leading the excavation of the tunnel.

Numerous pieces of pottery, along with a sculpture depicting Tlaloc, a god associated with rainfall and fertility, were found beside the bouquets, he added. 

The bouquets were likely part of rituals, possibly associated with fertility, that Indigenous people performed in the tunnel, Gómez-Chávez told Live Science in a translated email. The team hopes that by determining the identity of the flowers, they can learn more about the rituals. 

The team discovered the bouquets just a few weeks ago. The number of flowers in each bouquet varies, Gómez-Chávez said, noting that one bouquet has 40 flowers tied together while another has 60 flowers. 

Archaeologists found evidence of a large bonfire with numerous pieces of burnt wood where the bouquets were laid down, Gómez-Chávez said.

It seems that people placed the bouquets on the ground first and then covered them with a vast amount of wood. The sheer amount of wood seems to have protected the bouquets from the bonfire’s flames. 

The tunnel that Gómez-Chávez’s team is excavating was found in 2003 and has yielded thousands of artefacts including pottery, sculptures, cocoa beans, obsidian, animal remains and even a miniature landscape with pools of liquid mercury. Archaeologists are still trying to understand why ancient people created the tunnel and how they used it. 

Teotihuacan contains several pyramids and flourished between roughly 100 B.C. and A.D. 600. It had an urban core that covered 8 square miles (20 square kilometres) and may have had a population of 100,000 people. 

Graves dating back 2,700 years have been unearthed in southern Mexico City

Experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have discovered 26 ancient graves dating back 2,700 years at a site in Mexico City.

Located in the south of the capital and adjoining a modern-day cemetery, the site measures 360 square meters and archaeologists believe that it might have been used by women for activities related to the care of infants.

During excavations over the last four months, the INAH team has found the graves at depths between 1.2 and 3.3 meters below street level. About 20 of them are in a perfect state of conservation.

“Until now, we have detected four stages of settlement; four historical periods linked to the start of the 20th century, the Porfiriato [the period of more than three decades when former president Porfirio Díaz was in power], Mexico’s independence and the pre-Hispanic period,” said Antonio Balcorta Yépez, an INAH archaeologist working on the project.

Of the 26 graves found, 11 are in the form of a truncated cone, while the archaeologists have also found vestiges of walls from pre-Hispanic structures.

“We’ve made a series of discoveries that have revolutionized the knowledge we had about graves in the pre-classic period. The context suggests to us that we are in a village where they carried out specialized activities.

The height [of the site and] its geographical and strategic position indicates to us that the people [who lived on] this hill may have had greater control over certain resources compared to the village of Copilco,” Balcorta said.

Truncated cone graves were not only used for funeral purposes but also to store grains, artefacts and waste materials, he explained.

However, there is also evidence that indicates that at least two of the graves may have been used by women for everyday activities related to caring for their children, such as giving a herbal steam bath to a newborn baby.

That theory is supported by the discovery of more than 130 figurines in the graves, most of which represent pregnant women, while a smaller number are of infants. The ceramic pieces feature red, yellow and black colourings on their different body parts.

The INAH team has extracted samples from different parts of the graves to carry out chemical and pollen analyses aimed at confirming or rejecting the perinatal care hypothesis.

The archaeologists have also made discoveries from more recent times including remnants of ammunition used in the Mexican revolution and parts of adobe bricks and other building materials that formed part of a house that stood on the site at the end of the 19th century.

Because it is 2,296 meters above sea level, it is believed that the site was not affected by lava flows following the eruption of the Xitle Volcano between 245 and 315 AD and for that reason it has remained in well-conserved condition.

A 2,000-year-old tunnel in the Mexican city of Teotihuacan holds ancient mysteries

Eleven years after discovering a secret tunnel beneath the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico, Researchers uncovered thousands of ritual objects at the feet of what might be a royal tomb.

Guarded by the remains of hundreds of sacrificial bodies, the entrance to the tunnel remained hidden until it was located by radar researchers from the National University of Mexico beneath one of Mexico’s most visited historical sites in 2003.

Before eventually hitting the tunnel entrance in 2010, they spent years preparing the exploration and raising funds. It seemed that the tunnel was closed on purpose by the inhabitants of the city. More than 40 feet below ground, the entrance was covered with rocks.

The tunnel, hundreds of feet long, follows a route of symbols leading to several sealed funeral chambers that may hold the bodies of ancient rulers.

Archaeologists first explored the tunnels, choked with mud and rubble, using a three-foot robot equipped with mechanical arms and a video camera. They then methodically catalogued every bone, seed and shard of pottery as they made their way to the crypts at the end.

“For a long time local and foreign archaeologists have attempted to locate the graves of the rulers of the ancient city, but the search has been fruitless,” archaeologist Sergio Gomez of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a 2010 press release.

Meanwhile, his team’s excavation of the tunnel suggested they were on the brink of uncovering the long-lost tombs.

“If confirmed, it will be one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 21st century on a global scale,” he told the Associated Press in 2011.

Discoveries include finely carved stone sculptures, jewellery and shells along with obsidian blades and arrowheads.

They found offerings laid before the entrance of three chambers at the end of the tunnel suggesting these are the tombs of the elite.

So far Gomez’s team has excavated two feet into the chambers. The exploration will continue next year.

The Discovery of tombs may unlock long-held mysteries of a civilization that left no written records of its existence, including how it was governed and whether leadership was hereditary.

“Due to the magnitude of the offerings that we’ve found, it can’t be in any other place,” Gomez said Wednesday. “We’ve been able to confirm all of the hypotheses we’ve made from the beginning.”

At its peak in the middle of the first century, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas with an estimated 200,000 inhabitants.

The Aztecs, who arrived centuries after Teotihuacan had fallen, gave the city its name, which means “birthplace of the gods” in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWnxZxi4PiM

Mexico to bury archaeological find because of virus costs

In a strange turn of events, researchers in Mexico have announced they plan to rebury an unusual archaeological monument found in the outskirts of Mexico City – covering up an important historical discovery until some unknown time in the future.

The discovery in question is a tunnel built centuries ago as part of the Albarradón de Ecatepec: a flood-control system of dikes and waterways constructed to protect the historical city of Tenochtitlan from rising waters.

Tenochtitlan, widely viewed as the capital of the Aztec Empire, featured numerous dam systems to prevent flooding from torrential rains, but Spanish conquistadors failed at first to appreciate the ingenuity of this indigenous infrastructure, destroying many of the pre-Hispanic constructions in the early years of Spanish colonization.

However, after numerous floods inundated the early colonial Mexico City, the Albarradón de Ecatepec and other flood-control systems like it were built or repaired in the early 1600s.

Centuries later, archaeologists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered one such feature within the Albarradón de Ecatepec, finding in 2019 a tunnel that preserved a unique synthesis of the cultures that created it.

This small tunnel-gate measured just 8.4 meters (27.5 ft) long, representing only a tiny part of the colossal Albarradón de Ecatepec monument, which in total extended for 4 kilometres (2.5 miles), built by thousands of indigenous workers.

But while it was small, it was still an important (and unusual) discovery, with researchers finding several pre-Hispanic glyphs displayed in the structure.

In total, 11 symbols were discovered – including representations of a war shield, the head of a bird of prey, and raindrops, among others.

It’s thought the symbols may have been built into the tunnel by non-Hispanic residents from the towns of Ecatepec and Chiconautla, who helped to construct the Albarradón de Ecatepec.

While the dike featured pre-Hispanic iconography, its overall architecture suggested the Spanish were in charge of the design.

“One objective of our project was to know the construction system of the road, which has allowed us to prove that it does not have pre-Hispanic methods, but rather semicircular arches and andesite voussoirs, lime and sand mortars, and a floor on the upper part, with stone and ashlar master lines,” researchers explained in 2019.

“Everything is Roman and Spanish influence.”

The discovery was intended to be made into a public exhibit so that people could visit and inspect this unusual, centuries-old fusion of Aztec and Spanish cultural elements, but unfortunately, it’s not to be.

Researchers from INAH have now announced that due to a lack of funds to properly construct the exhibit and protect the remarkable structure, the recently discovered tunnel section will now have to be covered up once more – with the tunnel to be reburied so that it doesn’t become damaged, vandalized, or looted from.

According to the researchers, the decision is largely due to the ongoing economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in Mexico, which has so far claimed over 237,000 lives.

The researchers say they will construct special masonry to protect the glyphs, and then recover the painstakingly excavated site with earth.

It’s not every day archaeologists have to ‘undiscover’ the cultural treasures they reveal in the ground. Here’s hoping it won’t be too long before this section of the Albarradón de Ecatepec gets to see the light of day once more.

The Largest Confirmed Pyramid on Earth Dwarfs The Great Pyramid of Giza

It is the largest pyramid on Earth, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza and almost doubles the volume. The Pyramid is recognized as the largest pyramid in volume with four million five hundred thousand cubic meters. It literally DWARFS the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Experts estimate that it took around 1,000 years for the Pyramid to be built. It is also so far, the largest monument ever built in the world, among all ancient civilizations. It still remains a mystery as to WHO built the Pyramid.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula or Tlachihualtepetl –from the Nahuatl meaning “handmade hill”— is the largest pyramidal basement in the world with 450 meters per side. In fact, it is not a single pyramid at all, but one monument stacked on top of another, consisting of at least six buildings. It grew in stages, as successive civilizations improved what had already been built.

With 450 meters wide and 66 meters high, the Great Pyramid of Cholula is equivalent to nine Olympic swimming pools. However, the Great Pyramid of Cholula has an impressive list of records: it is the largest pyramid on Earth, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza and almost doubles the volume. It is also so far, the largest monument ever built in the world, among all civilizations.

Curiously, It is also officially recognized as the largest pyramid in volume with 4,500,000 m³, but it is not the tallest one; With  65 m high the  Great Pyramid of Cholula is similar to that of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan which has 64, while the Great Pyramid of Giza In Egypt it has a height of 139.

While experts are unsure as to when exactly the Pyramid building process was begun, archaeologists believe it was around 300 BC or at the beginning of the Christian era.

It is estimated that it took between 500 and 1,000 years until the pyramid was finished.  According to legend, when the local inhabitants heard that the Spanish Conquistadores were approaching, the locals covered the sacred temple with dirt.

When Cortes and his men arrived in Cholula in October 1519, some 1,800 years after the pyramid was built, they massacred about 3,000 people in a single hour, 10% of the entire population of the city, and levelled many of their religious structures.

But they never touched the pyramid, because they never found it.

The Pyramid is a mind-bending structure, and it is so old that when Cortes and his men arrived in Mexico, the monument was already thousands of years old and completely covered by vegetation.

Strangely, first on-site excavations revealed a series of horrifying discoveries, including deformed skulls of decapitated children.

Curiously, little is known about the initial history of the pyramid. It is thought that construction began around 300 BC, but it remains a mystery who erected it.

According to legends, the Great Pyramid of Cholula was built by giants.

Archaeologists estimate that the Cholutecas participated in the construction.

Olmec Civilization: Survivors of Atlantis?

Are the Ancient Olmecs Survivors of Atlantis?

It is a theory that according to many, could explain the incredible technologies and skills of this enigmatic Ancient Civilization.

Even though the Olmec civilization is surrounded by numerous mysteries, researchers believe that all the classical cultures of Mesoamerica originated from this mysterious civilization. But where did this ancient civilization originate? And why is it that we know so little about one of the most influential ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica?

Their stonemason skills were something noteworthy, achieving incredible constructions and monuments, like the giant Olmec heads, before the Aztecs, Mayas and other civilizations of the Americas. The question that has baffled archaeologists and other researchers are how?

From where did the ancient Olmecs obtain their knowledge and where do they come from?

Is it possible that as some researchers suggest, the Ancient Olmecs are the survivors of Ancient Atlantis?

Atlantis and the Olmecs

The Olmecs were a very advanced civilization that predates the Ancient Maya and Aztec empires. Their knowledge in geology allowed this mysterious ancient civilization to literally “terraform” certain regions. The San Lorenzo plateau is one of those examples. It is considered one of the most important architectural projects in ancient times.

The entire region was “modified” to the liking of the ancient Olmecs. This project involved the removal of tons of earth and rock that allowed the construction of giant terraces, walls and monuments, literally transforming their surroundings into a sacred area for their inhabitants.

The question that still remains is, how did ancient man achieve this… thousands of years ago? Is it possible that their advanced technology and knowledge originated on the last city-continent of Atlantis? And if so, are there any similarities between them?

If Atlantis did exist? How come that there is no evidence of this mythical “continent“, surely such a powerful ancient civilization would have left its mark worldwide, why is it that Plato is one of the few who mentioned Atlantis?

Basically, the tale about Atlantis did not exist until Plato wrote about it. But what if… Atlantis was destroyed but its people lived on… only that this time they were not called Atlanteans but Olmecs? No one can explain where the Olmecs came from, we know based on research where historians believe they originated from, but due to certain features, like the giant Heads which do not resemble natives from Central America, many believe that the Olmec civilizations actually originated from another place on Earth, a place that some call ancient Atlantis.

This ancient civilization achieved an incredible degree of development, totally incomprehensible if we consider that we know nothing of their origin nor their roots. They were a society that knew about animal domestication, and beekeeping before any other ancient civilization.

The Hematite Bar, possible evidence of advanced technology?
One of the most mysterious findings directly connected with the Ancient Olmec civilization is a 3.5 cm hematite bar that has caused mixed reactions among researchers. When placed on the water its axis points towards the north.

According to researchers from the University of Michigan, this device was a compass. This changes a lot in history since it would mean that the ancient Olmecs are the inventors of the compass and no the Chinese as previously thought. The device is believed to have been used to position their constructions facing north.

The Olmec Legacy

The ancient Olmecs left so much yet so little behind and just like many other great ancient civilizations, they too disappeared without a trace. In addition to the gigantic heads, the Olmecs have left other pieces of great artistic value, such as thrones, altars and human figures and no other culture in Mesoamerica attained perfection and the level of mastery of the Olmecs when it comes to sculpting.

The question is, how did this ancient civilization that was almost in the stone age, manage such perfection that engineers today cannot replicate?

Mexican cave contains signs of human visitors from 30,000 years ago

At first glance, Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico’s Zacatecas state is an unlikely place to find signs of early humans, let alone evidence that might change the story of the peopling of the Americas. It sits a daunting 1000 meters above a valley, overlooking a desert landscape in the mountains north of Zacatecas. Getting there requires a 4- or 5-hour uphill scramble over a moonscape of jagged boulders.

But in the soil below the cave’s floor, a team led by archaeologist Ciprian Ardelean of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, University City Siglo XXI, dug up almost 2000 stone objects that researchers think are tools. By combining state-of-the-art dating methods, the team argues that humans were at the site at least 26,000 years ago—more than 10,000 years before any other known human occupation in the region. “Chiquihuite is a solitary dot” of human occupation, Ardelean says.

The dates place humans there during the height of the last ice age when ice covered much of what is now Canada and sea levels were much lower. To have settled in Mexico by then, Ardelean says, people must have entered the Americas 32,000 years ago or more before the ice reached its maximum extent.

“If it is true people were in Zacatecas by 32,000 years ago, that changes everything—it more than doubles the time people have been in the Americas,” says Oregon State University, Corvallis, archaeologist Loren Davis, who was not part of the research team. But he remains sceptical, in part because he isn’t convinced the artefacts are tools. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible,” he says. “But if all they found are fractured rocks without any corroborating evidence, it’s natural to be skeptical.”

Still, he and others say they’re willing to be convinced. For decades, most researchers thought humans arrived in the Americas approximately 13,000 years ago; occasional claims of an earlier arrival met strong criticism. But over the past decade, evidence for earlier migrations has emerged at sites from Canada to southern Chile.

Most researchers now think people travelled by boat along North America’s west coast, exploiting marine resources, as early as 16,000 years ago, when the interior of the continent was mostly frozen over.

Just one other site—Bluefish Caves, in Canada’s Yukon territory—has yielded dates as old as Chiquihuite. Researchers attribute thousands of broken animal bones there—dated to about 24,000 years ago—to human hunting. But the site remains controversial, in part because few stone tools or cut marks have been found among the bones.

Ardelean heard about the cave from local villagers. Beginning in 2012, he and his team spent 1 month or more at a time at Chiquihuite, resupplying every few weeks using donkeys. Although forbidding today, the site would have looked far more hospitable 26,000 years ago.

A spring-fed creek flows near the cave’s original entrance, which was blocked long ago by rockslides. DNA and other evidence the researchers extracted from inside the cave show it opened onto a lush landscape harbouring cranes, condors, marmot, goat, sheep, horses, and bears. “It looked a lot more like British Columbia or Oregon than desert,” Ardelean says.

Digging into the cave floor over the past 8 years, Ardelean and his team found stones shaped into what look like scrapers, hand axes, spear points, and other tools at depths of up to 3 meters.

Dating experts at the University of Oxford, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and elsewhere determined when the rocks had last been exposed to light and radiocarbon-dated more than 50 samples of animal bone and charcoal found near the tools.

As the group reports today in Nature, the artifacts were deposited starting 26,000 years ago and accumulated on the cave floor for the next 16,000 years. The authors argue that it adds up to a continuous human presence, with people regularly visiting the cave over millennia.

But the team found no human DNA or bones cut marked by human hands. Nor did they discover a central hearth, so they can’t be certain whether the bits of burned wood analyzed for radiocarbon dates are from wind-blown wildfires or human-made campfires.

“The evidence is what the evidence is,” says team member Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, a radiocarbon dating expert at UNSW. “We’re quite confident that the stone tools are, indeed, stone tools.”

Critics point out that the tools are simple and don’t resemble other toolkits from the Americas, raising the possibility they’re the product of natural breakage. “They look like they could be artifacts, but why aren’t they found anywhere else in the landscape?” wonders David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University.

The tools’ consistency is also remarkable, he says. “If these tools are real, why are they only found—so far at least—in this one spot over a 10,000-year period? Humans adapt and adopt new technology.”

Becerra-Valdivia says work in other sites, especially those south of the United States, may turn up corroborating evidence. “We need to take a really good look at South America.”

 And Ardelean says Chiquihuite has more secrets to reveal: “This is not a hit-and-run discovery. There’s more evidence coming.”

34 Pre-Columbian Artifacts Returned to Mexico by Germans

DW reports that more than 30 pre-Columbian artefacts have been handed over to Mexico’s embassy in Germany.

Mexico has recovered 34 pre-Columbian artifacts that were voluntarily returned by two German private collectors, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday.

“Two German citizens approached our embassy in Berlin to express their interest in returning archaeological pieces that were in the possession of their families,” said the Mexican foreign minister’s legal consultant, Alejandro Celorio.

The Mexican Culture Ministry tweeted details of the items recovered: “Among the cultural assets there are bowls, vessels, stamps and an Olmec-style anthropomorphic mask.”

The mask, made of rock and from the period 1200-600 B.C., was just one of the objects dating back centuries. Others included anthropomorphic clay figures and a three-legged Mayan clay pot from the period 1000-1521 A.D.

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Sensitive issue

Diego Prieto, director of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, highlighted the “growing sensitivity” in the global community about the need to respect cultural heritage and return artefacts.

The recovered pieces were handed over to embassy officials in July of this year.

Twenty-eight of the objects were in the city of Monheim am Rhein in western Germany and the remaining six in Recklinghausen, some 70 kilometres (43 miles) away.