Archaeologists Uncover a Monumental Ancient Maya Map of the Cosmos

Archaeologists Uncover a Monumental Ancient Maya Map of the Cosmos

By Humberto Basilio edited by Andrea Thompson

Finding the oldest Maya web site ever documented was solely the start of archaeologist Takeshi Inomata’s discoveries. After finding the Aguada Fénix web site buried within the jungle of southern Mexico in 2017, Inomata and his staff started digging downward and uncovered a large cross-shaped pit.

Inside the pit had been pigments of blue azurite to the north, inexperienced malachite to the east and yellow ochre to the south, in addition to marine shells interspersed with axe-shaped clay choices to the west, says Inomata, a researcher on the University of Arizona. Later the staff realized that the cross-shaped pit was aligned with big canals that prolonged towards the 4 cardinal instructions.

The cross and the canals, Inomata says, kind a cosmogram—a monumental map of the universe etched into the panorama. Cosmograms had been utilized by Mesoamerican civilizations to characterize their understanding and cultural relationship with the cosmos. Inomata says that his and his colleagues’ findings, revealed on Wednesday in Science Advances, problem long-held assumptions in regards to the social order of the traditional Maya and the explanations behind their architectural achievements.

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For many years, archaeologists theorized that the monumental structure constructed by the Maya civilization, similar to pyramids and different ceremonial facilities, arose after historic Maya hierarchy started to emerge round 350 B.C.E. and was the product of highly effective rulers who commanded labor and managed assets. (This social scale consisted of 4 distinct courses, with slaves and commoners within the two lowest tiers and clergymen and the Aristocracy on the prime.) Earlier Maya communities, in contrast, had been assumed to dwell in small villages with modest ceremonial buildings.

Aguada Fénix covers a virtually nine-by-7.5-kilometer space, making it one of many largest historic constructions in all of Mesoamerica. After its discovery in 2017, the staff discovered that the location dated from between 1000 and 800 B.C.E., lengthy earlier than Maya hierarchies had developed. “The question was ‘Why was it built?’” Inomata says.

To discover solutions, he and his staff mixed lidar (gentle detection and ranging) know-how with excavations carried out between 2020 and 2024. From above, they discovered a sample of raised causeways, carved corridors and canals that fashioned nested crosses, all oriented alongside north-south and east-west axes. At the middle of this sample lay an oblong plateau and a plaza consisting of buildings organized in what known as an E Group, a ceremonial structure discovered throughout Mesoamerica and related to astronomical observations. Beneath it, the staff discovered the cross with the coloured pigments. Radiocarbon relationship positioned the 12 months of the ritual deposit as round 900 B.C.E.

The researchers additionally documented a community of canals and a dam that prolonged westward from the principle plateau; these options had been probably designed to channel water from a close-by lake. Though the hydraulic system seems unfinished, its monumental scale suggests a rare stage of coordination for its development, Inomata says.

Because the canals served no sensible goal, the archaeologists thought they may have been constructed for ritual use. The staff additionally discovered no palaces, royal tombs or elite residences on the web site. Along with the proof discovered contained in the pit, this means that Aguada Fénix might have been a gathering place the place dispersed communities got here collectively seasonally for rituals, ceremonies and feasts. Instead of orders from a ruling class, “religion was very important and motivated people to do this huge work,” Inomata says.

Within the archaeological neighborhood, there may be broad debate about what defines a cosmogram, says archaeologist Oswaldo Chinchilla of Yale University, who was not concerned with the analysis. Some archaeologists, together with Chinchilla, consider “the term has been somewhat overused,” he says, as a result of it has typically been utilized to precolonization websites with restricted proof. The case of Aguada Fénix is totally different, nevertheless, provided that “the evidence is strong.”

The use of pigments and the alignment of ceremonial facilities with the dawn and sundown are parts which can be strongly tied to Maya faith and cosmology, one thing that endures immediately amongst Maya communities that also dwell in Mexico and Central America, Chinchilla says.

“Based on what we know of Mesoamerican science and religion, the cruciform pit would have anchored everything to the cosmos,” says archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, who additionally was not concerned with the examine. “It helped to make it a sacred space for the community that built it.”

Like Inomata and Chinchilla, Stuart proposes that the underground choices positioned across the pit “work as a metaphorical planting, activating the space, which amounted to a cosmic stage,” maybe for communal gatherings and performances.

For Inomata, the brand new proof is a reminder that social hierarchies will not be at all times needed when a aim serves the frequent good, similar to by permitting for collective ritual. “This is a remarkable achievement of the [Maya] people who still live there,” he says.

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