Archaeologists Uncover a Monumental Historic Maya Map of the Cosmos

Archaeologists Uncover a Monumental Historic Maya Map of the Cosmos

By Humberto Basilio edited by Andrea Thompson

Discovering 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 crew started digging downward and uncovered a large cross-shaped pit.

Contained in 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 College of Arizona. Later the crew realized that the cross-shaped pit was aligned with large 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 symbolize 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 concerning 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 historical Maya hierarchy started to emerge round 350 B.C.E. and was the product of highly effective rulers who commanded labor and managed sources. (This social scale consisted of 4 distinct lessons, with slaves and commoners within the two lowest tiers and monks and the Aristocracy on the high.) Earlier Maya communities, against this, had been assumed to reside in small villages with modest ceremonial buildings.

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

To seek out solutions, he and his crew mixed lidar (mild 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. On the middle of this sample lay an oblong plateau and a plaza consisting of buildings organized in what is known as an E Group, a ceremonial structure discovered throughout Mesoamerica and related to astronomical observations. Beneath it, the crew discovered the cross with the coloured pigments. Radiocarbon courting 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 primary plateau; these options had been probably designed to channel water from a close-by lake. Although the hydraulic system seems unfinished, its monumental scale suggests a unprecedented degree of coordination for its development, Inomata says.

As a result of the canals served no sensible objective, the archaeologists thought they could have been constructed for ritual use. The crew additionally discovered no palaces, royal tombs or elite residences on the web site. Together 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. As an alternative of orders from a ruling class, “faith was crucial and motivated individuals to do that large work,” Inomata says.

Throughout the archaeological neighborhood, there may be broad debate about what defines a cosmogram, says archaeologist Oswaldo Chinchilla of Yale College, who was not concerned with the analysis. Some archaeologists, together with Chinchilla, imagine “the time period has been considerably overused,” he says, as a result of it has usually been utilized to precolonization websites with restricted proof. The case of Aguada Fénix is totally different, nevertheless, on condition that “the proof is robust.”

The usage of pigments and the alignment of ceremonial facilities with the dawn and sundown are components which might be strongly tied to Maya faith and cosmology, one thing that endures at the moment amongst Maya communities that also reside in Mexico and Central America, Chinchilla says.

“Primarily based on what we all know of Mesoamerican science and faith, the cruciform pit would have anchored all the pieces to the cosmos,” says archaeologist David Stuart of the College of Texas at Austin, who additionally was not concerned with the research. “It helped to make it a sacred house for the neighborhood that constructed it.”

Like Inomata and Chinchilla, Stuart proposes that the underground choices positioned across the pit “work as a metaphorical planting, activating the house, 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 all the time obligatory when a aim serves the widespread good, similar to by permitting for collective ritual. “It is a exceptional achievement of the [Maya] individuals who nonetheless reside there,” he says.

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