The secret cave lies hidden below the enormous ‘Moon Pyramid’

A secret cave hidden underneath a Mexican pyramid offers clues about the urban design of Teotihuacan, one of the largest and most vibrant cities of ancient times.

Located about 80 kilometers outside of today’s Mexico City, Teotihuacan peaked in AD 300–650, well before the Aztecs. The city boasted three monumental pyramids arranged along the 2.4-kilometer ‘Street of the Dead’.

Two of the pyramids were already known to overlie caves and tunnels, which were excavated by Teotihuacanos to obtain construction materials, and were later repurposed for activities such as astronomical observations, the veneration of death and the enthronement of rulers.

Denisse Argote at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City and her colleagues measured the electrical resistance of the ground beneath the third structure, the 43-meter-high Moon Pyramid.

They discovered a partially filled cavern about 15 meters underneath the edifice.

Unlike the other caves, this one seems to have formed naturally. Argote and her colleagues think the first settlers of Teotihuacan might have chosen it to be the focal point from which the rest of the city was planned.

Hard Science Unlocks Secrets of Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon

Previous archaeological digs at Teotihuacan have revealed a series of man-made tunnels beneath the Pyramids of the Sun and of Quetzalcoatl, the latter of which is also called the Temple of the Feathered-Serpent.

These had mostly been excavated for construction materials in upper structures, and according to a report in Heritage Daily, these tunnels were later “repurposed for astronomical observations and for venerating death in the underworld.”

The team of scientists applied ERT and ANT surveys, which are non-invasive geophysical techniques analyzing the electrical resistance of the ground beneath the structure.

They identified a natural void beneath the Pyramid of the Moon and a partially filled cavern at a depth of 15 meters (49 ft.) Contrasting with the man-made tunnels beneath the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan, the researchers believe that the cave under the Pyramid of the Moon “formed naturally,” and had been a focal point for the early settlers, in turn, influencing how the city was planned out.

Otherworldly Architectural Town Planning

With the placement of the pyramid at the end of the Avenue of the Dead, at the foot of Cerro Gordo, shaped to reflect the contours of these mountains, the researchers theorize that it was “symbolic of a connection between the avenue and the watery underworld, whereas the mountain serves as an anchor to the earth.” They said the impact of this discovery opens a discussion about the original planning of Teotihuacan ’s urban design.

The first human establishment in the area dates back to around 600 BC when farmers began tilling the Teotihuacan Valley, which at that time had a total population of about 6,000 inhabitants.

However, due to the development of successful agricultural technologies, from 100 BC to 750 AD, Teotihuacan morphed into a huge urban and administrative center with cultural influences throughout Mesoamerica.

Mapping the Ancient Underworld

Period III, from 350 to 650 AD, the so-called classical period of Teotihuacan, had an estimated 125,000 inhabitants. At that time it was one of the largest cities of the ancient world – with over 2,000 buildings in an 18 square kilometer (6.95 sq. mile) area. 

This period saw the massive reconstruction of monuments; including the decorating of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent which dates back to an earlier period.

Period IV, between 650 and 750 AD, marks the end of Teotihuacan as a major power in Mesoamerica. The remains of the homes of the city’s elites, which line the Avenue of the Dead, bear burn marks which lead archaeologists to hypothesize that the city experienced waves of violent social unrest that brought about the city’s decline.

What the newly discovered cave system essentially does is answer the question “why” the first settlers stopped here and started building precisely where they did, and not say 10 miles east or five miles south.

The cave beneath the pyramid suggests that people revered this natural access to the underworld so much that around it they built one of the most influential and biggest cities of the ancient world.

And the remains of that vast crumbling ancient city, which was aligned with the Sun, moon, and stars, it would seem, is a 1:1 map of the underworld – with the Avenue of the Dead acting as the main channel to the other side.

Grisly Child Sacrifice Found at Foot of Ancient Aztec Temple

Archaeologists discovered the site of children’s sacrifice at the foot of an ancient temple in a ruined Aztec city, located at the foot of the ancient Templo Mayor temple in the center of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.

It is believed that the young child was sacrificed to the Aztec war god Huitzilopochtli in the late fifteenth century. The sacrifice of children appears to have been relatively common in ancient Southern and Central American cultures.

Aztecs undertook human sacrifices, including children, as they believed this would bring the rains their crops needed to grow. The discovery comes 12 years after the location of the first child sacrifice site at the archaeological site, now in the center of the Mexican capital, Mexico City.

The child’s bones were reportedly found along with body adornments and symbols characteristic of Huitzilopochtli.

The remains, named ‘Offering 176’, were found under the floor of a square to the west of the Templo Mayor, which was the center of the ancient city.

The Aztecs had to raise a series of stone slabs from the floor to make way for the body, archaeologists point out. They then dug a pit in the ground and built a cylindrical box in which the child was placed with volcanic rocks, stuck together with stucco.

One expert told reporters: ‘Then they filled the square with soil brought from the banks of the old lake to build another square on top of it.’

A team made up of the archaeologists Rodolfo Aguilar Tapia, Mary Laidy Hernández Ramírez and Karina López Hernández, together with the physical anthropologist Jacqueline Castro Irineo, had the mission to excavate the find of the Offering 176.

Each of the human bones and the numerous objects made with different raw materials has been carefully excavated, cleaned, and registered. The discovery comes after hundreds of skulls were recently found in Tenochtitlan that is believed to have been placed on public display in ritual sacrifices.

Tenochtitlan was built on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. The city was the capital of the expanding Aztec Empire in the 15th century until it was captured by the Spanish in 1521.

At its peak, it was the largest city in the Pre-Columbian Americas.  Aztec human sacrifices were far more widespread and grisly that previously thought, archaeologists revealed in June. 

In 2015 Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found a gruesome ‘trophy rack’ near the site of the Templo Mayor.

Now, they say the find was just the tip of the iceberg, and that the ‘skull tower’ was just a small part of a massive display of skulls known as Huey Tzompantli that was the size of a basketball court.

In two seasons of excavations, archaeologists collected 180 mostly complete skulls from the tower and thousands of skull fragments. Cut marks confirm that they were ‘defleshed’ after death and the decapitation marks are ‘clean and uniform.’

Three-quarters of the skulls analyzed belonged to men, mostly aged between 20 and 35. Some 20 percent belonged to women and the remaining five percent were children.

Mask of the red queen A.D 670 Mexico

One of the richest known burials of the Mayan women monarch is the funeral assemblage of Palenque’s Lady Tz’akbu Ajaw, nicknamed the Red Queen as it was discovered to be covered in cinnabar.

Her sarcophagus was in Temple XIII, next to the Temple of the Inscriptions, where her husband, K’inich Janaab Pakal I, was entombed; her malachite funerary mask echoes his jadeite version. 

She also wore a headdress ornamented with shell eyes and fangs, probably representing a deity, and a necklace of multicolored beads. A Spondylus shell containing a limestone figurine probably represents a dedicatory offering performed when the queen was laid to rest.

The funeral complex of Tz’akbu Ajaw, the lady of Palenque called the Red Queen for having been found covered in cinnabar, comes from one of the most sumptuous tombs of a female Mayan ruler. 

Her sarcophagus was located in Temple XIII, located next to the Temple of the Inscriptions where her husband K’inich Janaab Pakal I was buried. Her malachite face mask evokes her husband’s jade version.

She was also wearing a headdress adorned with shell eyes and fangs, probably to represent a deity, as well as a multi-colored bead necklace. A Spondylus shell containing a limestone figurine may represent a dedicatory offering made for the queen’s burial.

Who Was the Red Queen?

The researchers called the woman found in the tomb the ”Red Queen”. Her remains were transported to the laboratory of the Mexican National Institute of Archaeology and History.

Researchers found that she lived between 600 and 700 AD – a date suggested by the pottery discovered inside the tomb.

The analysis included carbon 14 testing and facial reconstruction. With this, the team found that the woman died when she was about sixty years old and had osteoporosis. Moreover, her diet was revealed to be based mostly on meat.

She also had very healthy teeth, something that was not typical for the Maya people during that time.

Although the burial was a magnificent discovery, the researchers couldn’t hide their disappointment: Inside the chamber, they did not find any inscription or indication which could allow them to confirm her name.

The researcher Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz believes that she was Tz’ak-bu Ajaw, the wife of Pakal and the grandmother of the last Mayan king.

Currently, the team is looking for the tombs of Pakal and his sons. Comparing the DNA of the woman with Pakal’s sons could help them with this hypothesis.

The Legendary City of Palenque

Palenque was called Lekamha by the Maya people. This word means ”Big Water”. It was an impressive city which was built around the 3rd century BC and was inhabited until the end of the 8th century AD.

This was a political center and the capital for many male and female rulers. Now the site is located in a part of the state of Chiapas. It covers up to 2.5 square kilometers (1 square mile). Archaeologists claim that only 10% of the ancient city of Palenque has been explored so far.

Apart from the tomb of the Red Queen, another important discovery has been the tomb of K’inich Janaab Pakal, also known as Pacal the Great. He ruled during the 7th century AD and was buried in the temple called The Temple of the Inscriptions.

This is one of the “Cracked Eggs” you may encounter in the Bisti De Na Zin Wilderness Area.

In northern New Mexico, the Bisti Badlands are more like a dreamscape than a scenery.

Totem poles of sandstone rocks, or hoodoos, reach haphazardly into the brilliant blue sky, some so crooked that it’s amazing that even the smallest gust of wind doesn’t topple them over.

Resting beneath them sit what only can be described as giant cracked eggs, as if Mother Nature was cooking breakfast only to accidentally drop a carton onto the desert’s sandy floor and abandon the shattered shells.

How did a bunch of giant eggs get to this desolate area? The true story starts 73 million years ago.

At one time, this 45,000-acre swath of desert called the Bisti Badlands or the Bisti Wilderness Area (Bisti translates to “a large area of shale hills” in Navajo) was completely submerged by a sea called the Western Interior Seaway during the Cretaceous Period.

As the water receded, layers of sandstone, mudstone, shale, and other sedimentary rocks were revealed, creating the Kirtland Formation, only to be carved out by braided streams that flowed through the landscape. The result is today’s dry, eerie badlands.

“Over time, erosion of the soft mudstone weathered away leaving behind channel deposits [that formed into the shape of eggs and hoodoos],” Sherrie Landon, paleontology coordinator for the Farmington District Office of the Bureau of Land Management, tells LiveScience.

She explains that the eggs get their colorful, speckled appearance due to mineral deposits in the stream that cut through the sedimentary rock. “The eggs’ cracks are the result of differential weathering—mudstone weathers faster than other sediments, causing the formations to crack.”

The giant egg formations, which range from five to six-and-a-half feet long, aren’t the only reason to make a three-hour pilgrimage from Albuquerque (Bisti is near Farmington, New Mexico, in the Four Corners Region of the American Southwest).

A petrified forest of juniper and other conifers makes the badlands even more post-apocalyptic. It’s the result of a massive storm that rushed through millions of years ago covering the forest in water and sediment, explains Landon. 

And then there are the dinosaurs. Fossils—including dinosaur bones—have been found in the badlands, too.

“A few months ago, the National Guard airlifted fossils from a baby pentaceratops found here and brought them to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science,” Landon says. “It’s the only known fossil of a juvenile of this dinosaur species ever found.”

Don’t jump to conclusions—though the huge eggs look like prehistoric creatures could have left them behind, their origins are entirely geological.

And the eggs aren’t the area’s only Easter-like treat: Bisti Badlands also boasts pastel-painted sunsets. If you catch them at the right time, you’ll see the bright yellow sun drop behind the landscape like an egg yolk into a bowl.

Mexico: 3,000-year-old Mayan ceremonial complex discovered in Tabasco

In the latest breakthrough discovery of lost civilization, researchers have found the largest and the oldest Mayan site through a unique laser technology called lidar.

Using the aerial remote-sensing method, researchers at the University of Arizona found a colossal rectangular elevated platform that was built between 1000 and 800BC in Tabasco state, Mexico.

The new structure is located at the site called Aguada Fenix that liest near the border of Guatemala, which in its total volume exceeds the 1,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. 

The site, called Aguada Fénix, is located in the state of Tabasco, at the base of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s so vast for its age, the find is making archaeologists recalibrate their timelines on the architectural capabilities of the mysterious Maya.

Aguada Fénix, which measures over 1,400 meters (almost 4,600 ft) in length at its greatest extent, dates to a similar timeframe, with researchers estimating it was built between 1000 and 800 BCE – but its immense size and scope make it unlike anything found before from the period.

“To our knowledge, this is the oldest monumental construction ever found in the Maya area and the largest in the entire pre-Hispanic history of the region,” the researchers, led by archaeologist Takeshi Inomata from the University of Arizona, explain in a new paper about the discovery.

What’s even more staggering is that this huge, unknown structure has actually been hiding in plain sight for centuries, seemingly unrecognised by the modern Mexicans living their lives on top of the vast complex.

“This area is developed,” Inomata says. “It’s not the jungle; people live there. But this site was not known because it is so flat and huge. It just looks like a natural landscape.”

Despite Aguada Fénix’s inconspicuousness, it can’t hide from non-human eyes.

Aerial surveys using LIDAR detected the anomaly, revealing an elevated platform measuring 1,413 metres north to south, and 399 metres east to west, and extending up to 15 metres above the surrounding area.

“Artificial plateaus may be characterised as horizontal monumentality, which contrasts with the vertical dimensions of pyramids,” the authors write, noting the layout of Aguada Fénix marks it as an example of the Middle Formative Usumacinta (MFU) pattern, characterised by a rectangular shape defined by rows of low mounds.

Nine wide causeways extend from the platform, which is also surrounded by a number of smaller structures, including smaller MFU complexes and artificial reservoirs.

The site bears certain similarities to the Olmec sites San Lorenzo and La Venta in the nearby state of Veracruz, but Aguada Fénix’s lack of human-shaped statues could provide a clue about the ancient Maya that inhabited this complex, distinguishing them from the Olmec.

“Unlike those Olmec centres, Aguada Fénix does not exhibit clear indicators of marked social inequality, such as sculptures representing high-status individuals,” the authors write.

“The only stone sculpture found so far at Aguada Fénix depicts an animal.”

If the researchers are right about that, the site could be hugely important in helping us understand more about how these enigmatic human societies functioned and organized themselves – especially if they embraced a communal form of societal structure that rejected hierarchical forms.

“This kind of understanding gives us important implications about human capability, and the potential of human groups,” Inomata says.

“You may not necessarily need a well-organized government to carry out these kinds of huge projects. People can work together to achieve amazing results.”

Archaeologists Discover More Than 200-Year-Old Shipwreck In Mexico’s Caribbean.

QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO— BBC reports that an eight-foot cannon, anchor, and pig-iron ingots thought to have been used as a ship’s ballast were spotted by a fisherman in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of southern Mexico.

The wreckage rests in shallow waters and rough ocean currents at the Banco Chinchorro atoll reef, a dangerous area where 70 historic shipwrecks have been registered.

Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the vessel could be the remains of an English sailing ship built in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

They believe the ship sank more than 200 years ago after hitting a reef. While most of the wood has rotted away, the ship’s cannon and anchor are well preserved.

The wreck has been named after Manuel Polanco, the fisherman who first spotted it and reported it to Mexico’s National Archaeological Institute.

‘Nightmare Reef’

The wreck was found in the waters of the Banco Chinchorro atoll reef, about 35km from Majahual on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, and is thought to date back to the late 18th or early 19th Century.

The archaeologists think that it sank after hitting the Chinchorro Bank, which was colloquially known as “Nightmare reef” or “Sleep-robbing reef” because of the dangers it posed to seafarers.

Mexico has declared the area an underwater cultural heritage site because of the many wrecks which can be found there, including two Spanish galleons.

The Manuel Polanco is the seventieth wreck to be found in the area.

Mexico’s National Archaeological Institute (INAH) was alerted to the remains of the sailing ship – an anchor, a 2.5m-long (8ft) cannon, and pig iron ingots believed to have been used for ballast – by fisherman Manuel Polanco.

Mr. Polanco, who is now retired and in his 80s, already made some remarkable discoveries in the 1960s and 70s.

Among his best-known finds are the wreck of a ship dubbed “40 cañones” (40 cannons) and “The Angel”, a sailing ship which transported logwood – a natural source of purple dye – from Mexico to Europe.

He spotted the remains which INAH archaeologists are now studying as early as the 1990s, but archaeologists only carried out their first dives to inspect it in the past two months.

To honour his contribution to underwater archaeology, INAH scientists decided to name the newly located wreck after Mr. Polanco.

Due to his advanced age, Mr. Polanco did not accompany the archaeologists but sent his son Benito to help archaeologists locate the wreck instead.

The INAH scientists think the remains could have belonged to a British sailing ship but said they needed to carry out further studies before they could confirm its origin.

Skeletons of over 60 mammoths found under-construction site of future Mexico airport

In the future airport of the city, a team of archeologists working near Mexico City has discovered the remains of more than 60 mammoths.

The bone fragments found at the proposed construction site of the Felipe Angeles International Airport date back some 15,000 years, said the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

Both discoveries reveal how appealing the area — once a shallow lake — was for the mammoths.

Thursday, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said there was no immediate evidence that the 60 mammoths newly discovered at the old Santa Lucia military airbase had been butchered by humans.

The remains were uncovered close to the spot where the airport’s future control tower is to be built. INAH excavators have been working at the site – some 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) north of the capital – since April last year, seeking animal remains from the Pleistocene era.

• 

• 

The team reported in December that it had found the bones of a far smaller number of animals at the old Santa Lucia Air Base, a military airport being converted for civilian use.

The area was formerly submerged under the Xaltocan Lake, part of the Mexican Basin, and a focal point of the country’s pre-Colombian civilization. Traps for the hunting of mammoths, thought to have been dug soon after the lake dried up, were found at the site last year.

Almost all of the giant skeletons are thought to belong to the Colombian mammoth species.

Other types of fauna, including bison, camels, and horses were also found, as well as bones of humans buried in the pre-Hispanic era and various artifacts.

“The main challenge is that the richness of fauna and relics is greater than we had considered,” Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, INAH’s national anthropology coordinator told Mexico’s Excelsiornewspaper.

INAH says the discoveries are not intended to put a brake on the building of the airport, and that they had little impact on the building work.

“It would be a lie to say that we have not had an influence on the work being carried out, but we are working in coordination with those responsible,” said Sanchez Nava. “We are able to continue at our own pace without having too much influence on the times of the work.”