Mysterious Maya underground structure unearthed in Mexico

By Laura Geggel published 3 days ago

Archaeologists in Campeche, Mexico, have found an underground structure beneath a Maya ball court, as well as offerings on top of a Maya pyramid at another site.



A lidar-created image showing the site with the ball court where parts of an underground structure were found. (Image credit: Visualization of the Žiga Koka LiDAR data)


Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered a mysterious subterranean structure with painted walls hidden beneath a Maya ball court. The team found the building while excavating the ball court, the playing space for the ritual ball game played by the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples.

"We located parts of an earlier building that had painted walls, but only further excavations may reveal the shape of that underlying building and what its function was," said Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies in Slovenia and director of the excavation.

The finding is "evidently a very important structure, because ball courts are normally found only at major Maya sites, which were centers of the regional political organization," Šprajc told Live Science in an email. The structure could date to the Early Classic period (A.D. 200 to 600) and is covered with a layer of painted stucco, according to a translated statement from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Previously, Šprajc and his colleagues surveyed a large area of the Maya Lowlands in the Mexican state of Campeche with lidar, a technique that shoots millions of laser pulses from an aircraft. These pulses then bounce off the ground and return to the machine in the aircraft, allowing researchers to map the landscape's topography.



Archaeologists found a chert knife or spear point at a Maya pyramid.



two views of a ceramic fragment of an animal pawA ceramic fragment depicting the paw of an animal was found at the top of a Maya pyramid.(Image credit: Octavio Esparza Olguín)



A rectangular hole excavated from the groundPart of the ball court underground structure found during the excavation.(Image credit: Octavio Esparza Olguín)

More:
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/mysterious-maya-underground-structure-unearthed-in-mexico