Ancient ritual bloodletting may have been performed at carvings found in Mexico

Archaeologists in southern Mexico have discovered 30 carvings depicting capital I-shaped ballcourts cut into rocks. These carvings may have been used in ceremonies involving water and “ritual bloodletting,” new research finds. 

The carvings, in the ancient settlement of Quiechapa, are badly weathered, but small features in a few cases can be made out, such as one carving that appears to show a bench on the ballcourt. 

“Ballgames were of great significance to people throughout ancient Mesoamerica,” study researcher Alex Elvis Badillo, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Systems at Indiana State University, wrote in an article published Jan. 11 in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica. 

The shape of the ballcourts changed over time, and the rules of the ballgame are not known and may also have changed. The ballgame was played at least as early as 3,600 years ago, involved a rubber ball and two opposing sides, and was played from what is now the American Southwest, in Arizona and New Mexico, to as far south as Colombia in South America, Live Science previously reported. Much is still unknown about the ballgame but it appears to have held some level of religious and ceremonial importance scholars believe. 

It’s unclear when exactly these carvings were crafted. Quiechapa dates back at least 2,300 years and possibly earlier, and people in southern Mexico began using I-shaped ballcourts around 2,100 years ago, Badillo told Live Science in an email, adding that “I think it is logical to suggest that these carvings would have been made sometime after [100 B.C.], however, it is hard to say when these carvings were made.” 

The researchers found the 30 carvings in natural rock outcrops at two sites in the area. “This is the highest density in which this type of ballcourt representation occurs throughout Mesoamerica,” Badillo wrote in the study.

The biggest carving is 13.4 inches (34.1 centimeters) long while the shortest is 3.1 inches (8 cm) long, Badillo said. The archaeological team documented the carvings using structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry. In this system, photos were taken of the carvings from different angles and uploaded to a computer program, which used the images and an algorithm to create a virtual, 3D representation of the carvings. 

Bloodletting rituals

It’s not clear what the carvings were used for, but the researchers suggested that ancient Mesoamericans may have used them for rituals. The Spanish priest Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (lived 1581 to 1639), who lived in what is now Mexico following Spain’s conquest of the area in the 16th century, “describes certain rituals during which a [Mesoamerican] priest would have people spill blood into small cavities that they had made in stone,” Badillo wrote in the study, noting that those cavities could include the ballcourt carvings. 

“The idea that water and blood are considered sacred and are symbols that are central to Mesoamerican cosmology is well established in the [scholarly] literature,” Badillo wrote in the paper. 

“These seemingly inert stone carvings in Quiechapa’s landscape may have been part of deeply meaningful and active social performances that included ritual bloodletting for many possible purposes, including maintaining balance and agricultural fertility, marking important moments in time, or fomenting intra- and inter-community bonds,” Badillo wrote. 

However, he cautioned that until more evidence is found, archaeologists can’t be certain that rituals were performed at these carvings. 

Badillo presented the findings at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) annual meeting held in Chicago from March 30 to April 3. The ballcourt carving surveys were carried out as part of the Quiechapa Archaeological Project (PAQuie).

Rare 1000-Year-Old Maya Canoe Found in Yucatan Cenote

Archaeologists have discovered a wooden Maya canoe in southern Mexico, believed to be over 1,000 years old. Measuring over 5ft (1.6m), it was found almost completely intact, submerged in a freshwater pool near the ruined Maya city of Chichen Itza.

Mexico’s antiquities institute (Inah) says it may have been used to extract water or deposit ritual offers.

The rare find came during construction work on a new tourist railway known as the Maya Train.

In a statement, the Inah said archaeologists had also discovered ceramics, a ritual knife and painted murals of hands-on a rockface in the pool, known as a cenote.

Experts from Paris’s Sorbonne University have been helping with pin-pointing the canoe’s exact age and type, the statement said. A 3D model of it would also be made to allow replicas to be made, and to facilitate further study, it added.

The Maya civilisation flourished before Spain conquered the region. In their time, the Mayas ruled large stretches of territory in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

The boat has been tentatively dated between 830-950 AD, towards the end of the Maya civilisation’s golden age.

Around this period, the Mayas suffered a major political collapse, marked by the abandonment of cities dotted around modern-day Central America – leaving ruins of towering pyramids and other stone buildings.

No single theory for this collapse has been widely accepted, but it is believed a combination of internal warfare, drought and overpopulation may have been contributing factors.

The Maya Train is a multi-billion-dollar project, led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government, which will run through five southern Mexican states.

Advocates have said the rail network will help to alleviate poverty in the region. But critics argue that it risks damaging local ecosystems and undiscovered sites of historic importance.

Lost Maya City Inside Volcano Crater Explored by Archaeologists

A lost Mayan city that collapsed inside a volcano crater has been explored by a team of archaeologists. In the Late Preclassic period—400 BC to AD 250—there was a thriving Mayan city consisting of temples, houses and squares, in the middle of the volcanic Lake Atitlán.

The Atitlán, situated in the highlands of Guatemala, lies within a volcano carter more than 5,000 feet above sea level.

A catastrophic event—which experts believe was caused by some sort of volcanic activity—caused the city to collapse from its bottom, forcing the Mayans to flee.

The city sunk into the Atitlán’s depths and now lies 39 and 65 feet below its surface, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology.

The lost city has now been explored by a team of archaeologists, lead by the head of the Yucatan Peninsula Office at the National Institute of Anthropology, Helena Barba Meinecke. Their aim was to raise awareness of the city’s significance to the Indigenous communities in the region and promote its conservation.

To reach the sunken city, archaeologists carried out dives in the area.

During the dives, archaeologists uncovered the remains of buildings, columns, ceremonial stones, and other structures. From these findings, they were able to generate a planimetric map of the city.

“With this planimetry, we can speak of a site that measures at least 200 by 300 meters,” Barba Meinecke said in a statement.

Archaeologists also gathered silt samples from the lake in order to assess the dynamics of the site and measure its decay over time. The exploration also laid “groundwork” for a cultural centre, which will allow people to explore the site virtually.

It is not the only archaeological site within Lake Atitlán. There are two other lost cities lying below the surface of the lake called Samabaj and Chiutinamit.

Samabaj was the first underwater Mayan ruin excavated in Guatemala in Lake Atitlán. It was discovered in the late 1990s by a scuba diver who had been exploring the lake’s depths, according to a Reuters report from 2009.

The Maya civilization was an Indigenous society stretching across what is now Mexico and Central America. The earliest settlements in the Maya civilization were formed during the Preclassic period. The civilization thrived for over 3,000 years until it mysteriously disappeared. Towards the end of the ninth century, cities were gradually abandoned one by one.

To this day, experts are still unsure what happened but there are several theories. One is that ongoing warfare among cities caused a breakdown, while others believe that the civilization could no longer thrive in the surrounding environment.

Collection of Ancient Toothless Skulls Analyzed in Mexico

They all have the peculiarity of not having dental pieces, a trait registered in other mortuary caves of that entity.

A decade ago, a complaint alerted the Chiapas authorities about the presence of human remains in a cave in the town of Carrizal, in the municipality of Frontera Comalapa. Believing to be at the scene of a crime, the researchers collected the bone elements and began their analysis in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, and with the collaboration of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), it was possible to determine that the bones were pre-Hispanic.

Since then, analyzes have been carried out that allow INAH physical anthropologists to delve into a funerary context that is approximately a thousand years old and even theorize that there was an altar of skulls, or tzompantli, in the Comalapa Cave.

Physical anthropologist Javier Montes de Paz, a researcher at the INAH Chiapas Center, disseminated the preliminary results of said research in a virtual conference, as part of the “With you in the distance” campaign, of the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico, in the which pointed out the factors that support such a hypothesis.

One of them, he said, is that, although long bones of femurs, tibias or radii have been identified, until now not a single complete burial has been recognized but mostly skulls or fragments of these, which is why it is a context of numerous individuals who were beheaded.

“We still do not have the exact calculation of how many there are, since some are very fragmented, but so far we can talk about approximately 150 skulls,” said the specialist, providing a summary of the preventive conservation, cleaning and cataloguing work applied in each one of them.

The second factor by which Montes de Paz posits the existence of a tzompantli is the evidence of traces of aligned wooden sticks, according to the record raised in the cave by the then Chiapas State Attorney General’s Office in 2012.

According to the physical anthropologist, the fact that the skulls of Comalapa do not have perforations in the parietal and temporal bones –like those of the Huei tzompantli of Tenochtitlan–, is explained by the knowledge about altars that used structures to fix the skulls without perforating them.

“Many of these structures were made of wood, a material that disappeared over time and could have collapsed all the skulls,” he said.

Together with archaeologists from the INAH Chiapas Center, it has been established that the bone remains of the Comalapa Cave have cranial modifications of the erect tabular type and that they date from the Early Postclassic (900 and 1200 AD).

“We have recognized the skeletal remains of three infants, but most of the bones are from adults and, until now, they are more from women than from men,” said the researcher, noting that a common characteristic of the skulls is that none of them preserves the teeth.

Although it has not yet been established whether the teeth were extracted in life or postmortem, experts recognize precedents of this type in Chiapas: the Cueva de las Banquetas, explored in the 1980s by the INAH in the municipality of La Trinitaria, where 124 skulls that did not preserve teeth were recovered.

Another case is the Cueva Tapesco del Diablo, discovered in 1993 by Mexican and French explorers in the municipality of Ocozocoautla. Five skulls were discovered there with the particularity of having been placed on a wooden tapesco (grid).

The physical anthropologist Javier Montes de Paz emphasized the need to continue with the research in the complex, and even carry out new field seasons in the Cueva de Comalapa.

In this sense, he highlighted the responsibility that citizens must have to respect these spaces that were often used for rituals and pointed out that irregular visits affect the archaeological heritage, sometimes irreversibly.

“The call is that when people locate a context that is likely to be archaeological, they avoid intervening and notify the local authorities or the INAH directly,” he concluded.

Archaeologists in Mexico find 1,000-year-old Mayan canoe

Archaeologists in southern Mexico have discovered a well-preserved wooden canoe that may be more than 1,000 years old. Used by the Maya, the vessel was submerged in a cenote, or freshwater sinkhole, near the ruins of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán state, Reuters reports.

The canoe is just over five feet long and two and a half feet wide.

Ancient Maya people may have used it to gather water from the cenote or deposit offerings there, notes Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a statement. The team made the discovery during the construction of the Maya Train, a controversial railway set to connect tourist sites in the region.

Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe to between 830 and 950 C.E., BBC News reports. Experts from Sorbonne University in Paris are using dendrochronology, a dating method based on tree rings found in wood, to pinpoint the boat’s exact age.

Per a translation by Reuters, INAH describes the find as “the first complete canoe like this in the Maya area.”

Archaeologists have previously found fragments of similar boats in Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

The experts made the discovery while surveying a site known as San Andrés, located in a buffer area near the planned train route. A team from INAH’s Sub-Directorate of Underwater Archaeology (SAS) investigated three bodies of water at the site. 

While diving in the cenote, the researchers found a cave about 15 feet below the current water level, at a spot that marked the pool’s surface centuries ago. Inside the cave was the canoe.

As Ian Randall reports for the Daily Mail, the researchers also found mural paintings, a ceremonial knife and fragments of 40 pottery vessels that were likely intentionally broken as part of ritual events.

“It is evident that this is an area where ceremonies were held,” says SAS archaeologist Helena Barba Meinecke in the statement, per a translation by the Daily Mail, “… not only because of the intentionally fragmented pottery, but also because of the remains of charcoal that indicate their exposure to fire and the way [the Maya] placed stones on top of them to cover them.”

If the archaeologists are right about the age of the canoe, then it was made around the end of the Maya Classic Period, which is widely dubbed the culture’s golden age. During that era (250 to 900 C.E.), the civilization comprised about 40 cities and was home to between two and ten million people, according to History.com.

Chichén Itzá itself was home to around 35,000 people at its peak, notes Encyclopedia Britannica. The people who founded the city in the sixth century C.E. may have chosen the site because of its cenotes and other limestone formations, which provided easy access to water in a dry region.

Most of Chichén Itzá’s iconic buildings appear to have been constructed by a group of Mayan language speakers who invaded the city in the tenth century, following the collapse of other Maya cities.

Among these is El Castillo, a 79-foot-tall pyramid with a design reflecting Maya astronomical principles.

During the Post-Classic Period (900 to 1540 C.E.), Chichén Itzá joined the cities of Uxmal and Mayapán in a confederacy called the League of Mayapán.

By the time Spanish forces arrived in the region in the 16th century, however, Chichén Itzá and the rest of the Maya’s major cities had been mostly abandoned for reasons that remain unclear. 

INAH has put the San Andrés site under protection in response to evidence of looting at the cenote.

The team transferred ceramic and bone items found at the site to the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá; it also plans to make a 3-D model of the boat for research purposes and to facilitate the production of replicas for display in museums.

207-year-old whaling ship discovered in the Gulf of Mexico

The wreck of a 19th-century whaling ship has been identified on the sea bottom in the Gulf of Mexico. Its discovery was announced Wednesday (March 23) in a statement released by representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their partners in the expedition. 

Researchers onboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer spotted the wreck on Feb. 25 at a depth of 6,000 feet (1,800 meters).

They used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to explore a seafloor location where the shipwreck had previously been glimpsed, but not investigated, in 2011 and 2017, and their search received additional guidance via satellite communication with a scientific team onshore, according to the statement. 

A team of experts then confirmed that the vessel was the Industry, which sank May 26, 1836, while the crew was hunting sperm whales. It was built in 1815, and for 20 years, the 64-foot-long (19.5 meters) ship had pursued whales across the Gulf, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean, until a storm breached its hull and snapped its masts. 

Though 214 whaling voyages crisscrossed the Gulf from the 1780s until the 1870s, this is the only known shipwreck in the region, NOAA representatives said.

The crew list for Industry’s last voyage was lost at sea, but past ship records show that among Industry’s essential crew were Native American people and free Black descendants of enslaved African people.

The discovery of the wreck could offer important clues about the role that Black and Native American sailors played in America’s maritime industry at the time, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said in the statement. 

“This 19th-century whaling ship will help us learn about the lives of the Black and Native American mariners and their communities, as well as the immense challenges they faced on land and at sea,” Graves said.

Life on a whaling ship would certainly have been challenging, with long hours, hard physical labour and poor food that was likely to be infested with vermin, according to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

Living conditions could also be extremely unpleasant; a whaler’s account from 1846 described the crew’s quarters, known as the forecastle, as “black and slimy with filth, very small and hot as an oven,” J. Ross Browne wrote in the book “Etchings of a Whaling Cruise,” according to the museum.

“It was filled with a compound of foul air, smoke, sea-chests, soap-kegs, greasy pans, [and] tainted meat,” Browne wrote.

A deep dive

NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer collects data on unknown or little-explored seafloor regions of the deep ocean, mapping seamounts and discovering mysterious forms of elusive marine life at depths from 820 to 19,700 feet (250 to 6,000 m), according to NOAA.

Past expeditions have revealed “mud monsters” in the Mariana Trench, the “most bizarre squid” an NOAA zoologist had ever seen, and a real-life SpongeBob and Patrick living side by side on the seafloor, Live Science previously reported.

Video from the ROV combined with Industry records enabled the scientists to confirm that they had discovered the long-lost whaling brig.

Another clue that helped experts to identify Industry was that there was little onboard evidence of its whaling activities; when the ship was sinking, another whaling vessel visited the foundering Industry and salvaged its equipment, removing 230 barrels of whale oil, as well as parts of the rigging and one of the ship’s four anchors, according to the NOAA statement.

“We knew it was salvaged before it sank,” Scott Sorset, a marine archaeologist for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and a member of the expedition’s shore team, said in the statement. “That there were so few artefacts on board was another big piece of evidence it was Industry.” 

New research has also shed light on what happened to Industry’s crew on that final voyage.

Robin Winters, a librarian at the Westport Free Public Library in Massachusetts, unearthed an 1836 article from The Inquirer and Mirror (a Nantucket weekly newspaper) reporting that Industry’s crew was rescued by another whaling ship and brought to Westport.

That was a lucky turn of events for Industry’s Black whalers in particular, who could have been jailed under local laws had they reached shore with no proof of identity, said expedition researcher James Delgado, a senior vice president at the archaeology firm SEARCH. 

“And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery,” Delgado said in the statement.

The largest Aztec temple was decorated with over 100 starfish

Aztec priests at Tenochtitlán offered a whole galaxy of starfish to the war god Huitzilopochtli 700 years ago, along with a trove of other objects from the distant edges of the Aztec Empire. Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) recently unearthed the offering on the site of the Templo Mayor, the main temple in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, in what is now Mexico City.

Ahuizotl, coast to coast

The offering included 164 starfish from a species called Nidorella armata, known less formally as the chocolate chip starfish because it’s mostly the colour of cookie dough, but it has dark spots. (It shares the nickname with the other chocolate chip sea star, Protoreaster nodosus, which provides an excellent argument in favour of scientific names.) Nidorella armata lives along the Pacific coastline from Mexico south to Peru, where it hangs out on shallow-water reefs of rock and coral.

For Tenochtitlán, the nearest source of chocolate chip starfish would have been nearly 300 kilometres away from the Aztec capital. Chunks of coral found in the same offering came from about the same distance away but in roughly the opposite direction—the western end of the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, these items came from the farthest eastern and western edges of the Aztec Empire, places that the Aztec ruler Ahuizotl had only recently conquered.

Ahuizotl took the throne in 1486, and he jumped straight into two major projects: renovating the capital, including the Templo Mayor, and expanding the borders of his empire. His campaigns nearly doubled the size of the Aztec Empire, stretching Aztec rule west to the Pacific coast of Mexico and southeast to Guatemala. All that conquest meant that the Aztecs could easily bring starfish from the Pacific and corals from the Gulf of Mexico, along with an assortment of marine shells (and even pufferfish) to Tenochtitlán to lay before their gods.

Conquistadors ruin everything

Back in the capital, Ahuizotl ordered the reconstruction of large parts of the city. His efforts included expanding the Templo Mayor, which in Aztec terms meant building a new, bigger outer layer over the top of the previous temple. (The prior construction was often ritually “killed” before the new one could be consecrated.) That’s convenient for modern archaeologists, who can date each layer of construction at the Templo Mayor.

The oldest part of the temple dates to around 1325, when a group of people called the Mexica migrated into the area surrounding what is now Mexico City. There, according to Mexica lore, their leaders saw an eagle perched on a prickly pear and eating a snake; it was the sign their priests had told them to expect from Huitzilopochtli, and it’s an image you might recognize from the modern Mexican flag. At the site, the Mexica built a city called Tenochtitlán, and from there, they ruled the Aztec Empire.

Huitzilopochtli shared the Templo Mayor with the rain and farming god Tlaloc; each god had his own shrine at the top of the pyramid, reached by separate staircases. Ahuizotl’s expansion, where archaeologists found the starfish offering, is the sixth layer of the Templo Mayor. Only one more layer would be added before the temple’s destruction.

Ahuizotl was the eighth ruler of the Aztec Empire and the last to rule before the Spanish conquistadors, led by Hernán Cortés, arrived and changed everything. Cortés arrived during the reign of Ahuizotl’s nephew, Moctezuma II, who died fighting the invaders. Moctezuma’s brother, who took the throne next, died of smallpox, a disease brought by the Spaniards. The throne passed to Ahuizotl’s son, Cuauhtémoc, who surrendered to Cortés in 1521, only to be tortured for the whereabouts of mostly nonexistent gold and silver. Cortés had Cuauhtémoc, the last ruler of the Aztec Empire, executed in 1525.

Seashells for the war god

By the time Ahuizotl’s son died, Cortés had already destroyed the Templo Mayor and had begun building a Christian cathedral in its place. Archaeologists rediscovered the buried remains of the temple in the 20th century, and they soon found that most of the seventh and final layer was too demolished to learn much from. The last well-preserved layer of the temple was the one Ahuizotl ordered built-in 1487. And that’s where archaeologists discovered the galaxy of starfish that the Aztec priests had once offered to Huitzilopochtli.

The offering had been placed in a round building called the Cuauhxicalco, which might have been where the remains of rulers like Ahuizotl were cremated. It’s in a part of the temple usually associated with Huitzilopochtli, based on historical descriptions and other archaeological finds, so archaeologists suggest that the starfish and other items were probably offerings to the war god.

Along with the starfish, seashells, and pufferfish, the offering included a resin figurine and a female jaguar holding an atlatl (a type of spear-thrower) in one claw.

This find is not the first time archaeologists working at the Templo Mayor site have found starfish among the offerings, but it’s the largest collection unearthed so far. And many of the starfish are larger than their modern descendants because global warming and centuries of harvesting by humans have caused the species to evolve toward a smaller body size.

One starfish, in particular, left behind a fossil-like imprint of not only its shape but its internal structures.

“It was, perhaps, one of the first stars that the Mexica priests placed in the offering, so when receiving the weight of the jaguar and all the elements, it sank into what is believed to be a layer of fibre below it, preserving the mark of its internal structure,” explained INAH in a press release. “This situation is unusual since the remains of the other 163 stars are scattered, due to the natural loss of their organic matter.”

Side note: What’s in a name?

If the name Ahuizotl sounds familiar to you and you’re not a student of Aztec history, you’re probably a My Little Pony fan or a tabletop RPG player. The Aztec ruler took his name from the name of a mythical creature that lived near lakes and in swamps. Reportedly, the creature looked a bit like a dog, except with monkey-like hands (including one at the end of its tail) and spiky fur. It also reportedly killed one of Cortés’ soldiers.

Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder both feature swamp-dwelling creatures called Ahuizotl, which bear a passing resemblance to the creature of Mexica legend. And a recurring villain in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was a dog-like, spiky-furred character named Ahuizotl. Now you know.

And knowing, after all, is half the battle.

Archaeologists stunned by ancient ‘death mask’ found in Mexican temple

Palenque is set amid lush forest and dense foliage in a slice of southern Mexico. It is not the largest Mayan city by any stretch, but it has been described as one of the most stunning. Its architecture and the accompanying carvings and sculptures are some of the finest surviving pieces of Mayan history, in a region where the civilisation once thrived.

Compared to other Maya settlements in Mexico, Palenque was technically advanced.

A sophisticated aqua-duct system provided its inhabitants with abundant spring water — just one of the many perks of living there.

In the seventh century AD, the city was ruled by the powerful king, Pacal the Great.

He had one of the longest reigns of any Maya monarch, taking the throne in 615 at the age of just 12, and ruled until his death aged 80.

While in power he oversaw the construction of some of Palenque’s jaw-dropping sacred sites like the huge Central Palace.

Perhaps most importantly, he commissioned the construction of the now-iconic Temple of the Inscriptions.

The temple and the work archaeologists have carried out in and around it was explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary, ‘Sacred sites: Maya’.

In the mid-20th century, researchers discovered a relic that would give a “new insight” into what the Maya believed about the afterlife, according to the documentary’s narrator.

Excavating the temple floor, they uncovered a passage to a chamber deep within the pyramid.

It contained a sarcophagus covered by a stone lid — inside, lay the remains of an elite Mayan wearing a Jade “death mask”.

Hieroglyphs on the sarcophagus soon confirmed that the remains belonged to King Pacal, much to the surprise of the researchers.

This is because it meant that the temple housed the tomb of the great king himself. The narrator noted that while it is a place of burial, it is also “intended as a place of resurrection.”

On the sarcophagus lid, the images illustrate a central Mayan belief that the Universe is made up of three levels: the Earth, the underworld and the heavens. Leaving this world, Pascal emerges from the underworld and is reborn into eternal life in the heavens in the engravings.

The narrator said: “This is the essence of Mayan religion.”

Later on, in 2018, archaeologists made yet another groundbreaking discovery at the site when they came across an ancient stucco mask unlike any other, thought to have been cast from Pacal’s face.

Unlike other artefacts found, however, it showed the king in old age, his wrinkles and other facial details clearly visible.

The 20-centimetre (7.8 inch) mask was found by a team with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) during an investigation of the temple’s ancient drainage system.

Diego Prieto, director of the institute, said: “Palenque continues to astonish us with everything it has to offer archaeological, anthropological, and historical research.”

Ceramic figures were also found alongside the mask, as well as decorated bones and the remains of several animals.

Experts believe these were most likely offerings made for the completion of the building’s reconstruction. Palenque eventually perished in the eight century AD, and became consumed by the jungle of cedar, mahogany, and sapodilla trees.