Mexican archaeologists have unearthed a buried Maya ball court.
According to Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist from Slovenia who served as the head of the dig, more digging will be needed to determine the exact form and purpose of the underneath structure, which had painted walls. Because the courts are often only discovered at large Maya sites, the nerve centers of the region’s political organization, this discovery clearly represents a highly significant construction. A statement translated from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History suggests that the painted stucco covering the building might be from 200 to 600 A.D.
A vast portion of the Maya Lowlands in Campeche was previously mapped using lidar, an aerial method that fires millions of laser pulses. Scientists can create a topographical map of the area since these pulses first hit the ground and then re-enter the device in the aircraft.
Šprajc said that excavations have uncovered many Maya villages, complete with the ruins of houses and temple pyramids. Ocomtún, a long-lost Maya metropolis with many massive pyramids dating back to the Maya Classic Period, around 200 to 900 AD, was unearthed by the team last year. According to him, the newly discovered region is south of Ocomtún.
The statement also states that the crew found another site with a water reservoir, a pyramid that is 52 feet tall, and a plaza. Archaeologists discovered a number of artifacts on top of the pyramid, including pottery utensils, a ceramic animal leg, and a pointed artifact made of a fine-grained rock known as chert.
The sacrifices were placed atop the temple during the Late Postclassic era, which Šprajc defined as the final few centuries before the conquest by the Spanish, from 1250 to 1524.
Similar to the Egyptian pyramids, the Mayan pyramids housed priceless artifacts and relics from the past. However, according to specialists, these structures often concealed something even stranger: tiny pyramids inside the bigger ones.
The Maya built temples for a variety of purposes, including religious ceremonies and the interment of kings and other prominent citizens.
Ancient Maya burial sites sometimes included objects representing self-sacrifice, such as jade masks, obsidian knives, jade pearls, and stingray spines.
After a population decline in the ninth and tenth centuries due to overcrowding, land erosion, droughts, and conflict, Maya people continued to live in the region. A poor group of people left tributes near the structures.
