2,000-year-old flower offerings found under Teotihuacan pyramid in Mexico

By Owen Jarus about 3 hours ago

The bouquets had survived a bonfire.



A bouquet of flowers found in a tunnel under a Teotihuacan pyramid survived a bonfire about 2,000 years ago. (Image credit: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)/Sergio Gómez)

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient people of Teotihuacan wrapped bunches of flowers into beautiful bouquets, laid them beneath a jumble of wood and set the pile ablaze. Now, archaeologists have found the remains of those surprisingly well-preserved flowers in a tunnel snaking beneath a pyramid of the ancient city, located northeast of what is now Mexico City.

The pyramid itself is immense, and would have stood 75 feet (23 meters) tall when it was first built, making it taller than the Sphinx of Giza from ancient Egypt. The Teotihuacan pyramid is part of the "Temple of the Feathered Serpent," which was built in honor of Quetzalcoatl, a serpent god who was worshipped in Mesoamerica.

Archaeologists found the bouquets 59 feet (18 m) below ground in the deepest part of the tunnel, said Sergio Gómez-Chávez, an archaeologist with Mexico's National Institute ore depicting Tlaloc, a god associated with rainfall and fertility, were found beside the bouquets, he added. f Anthropology and History (INAH) who is leading the excavation of the tunnel. Numerous pieces of pottery, along with a sculptu

The bouquets were likely part of rituals, possibly associated with fertility, that Indigenous people performed in the tunnel, Gómez-Chávez told Live Science in a translated email. The team hopes that by determining the identity of the flowers, they can learn more about the rituals.

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