One of the most important recent finds in the archeology of Mexico occurred thanks to an unexpected torrential rain that opened a hole in the ground of the Teotihuacan floor, below the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, one of the most visited archaeological sites in the country. The downpour uncovered a hole 83 centimeters in diameter that led to an immense tunnel 103 meters long and 18 meters deep, built by the Teotihuacans some 2,000 years ago. It is a metaphorical representation of the underworld, where more than 100,000 objects have been found since 2009, the date on which the exploration of the so-called 'Project Tlalocan: Path under the earth' formally began. The last object was found this week - shortly before the underground exploration work was completed - and it has been spectacular:four almost intact bouquets of flowers dating from between the year zero and 200 AD.
View of the tunnel with a laser scanner of the Quetzalcóatl temple. HÉCTOR MONTAÑO / INAH
The archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez, leader of the investigation, has seen this latest discovery as a gift from the earth, now that this exploration stage is about to end and begins another of analysis and study of the materials found. “This finding occurs after 12 years of continuous work. Last week we detected the presence of these botanical plant elements, which correspond to four bouquets of flowers, tied with ropes in a very good state of preservation; This morning we recovered a leaf from a plant, very important for biologists to achieve botanical identification. It is something very significant for us, because it is like finishing a stage of work, which is the exploration stage, and then the tunnel, the earth, gives us these four bouquets of flowers ", says the archaeologist,in conversation with EL PAÍS.
One of the bouquets of flowers found in Teotihuacan.INAH
The find has been considered "exceptional" by archaeologists, as it is the first time that such well-preserved botanical material has been found in Teotihuacan.
Along with the flowers, the archaeologists found seeds of corn, beans, chili, pumpkin seeds, prickly pear seeds, a large amount of pottery and a sculpture made of stone representing a pyramid with a talus and board;
also several kilos of charcoal, presumably the product of a ritual ceremony.
These finds are in addition to the more than 120,000 objects found in the passageway.
In the last sections of the tunnel, more than 4,000 objects made of wood, obsidian, shells and snails, remains of organic origin such as rubber, hair and bone remains of big cats and birds have been recovered.
"What is relevant is not only the quantity, but these objects help us to understand much better the worldview, religion and magical thinking of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples," explains the archaeologist.
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The tunnel had been closed for at least 1,700 years. With the help of robots it was discovered that at the end of the conduit there was a large open space. A kind of cave dug by the Teotihuacanos that opens in three chambers. The researchers' central hypothesis was that this deep space was nothing less than a metaphor for the underworld. In the Mesoamerican cosmogony, the cosmos was divided into three regions: heaven, earth, and the underworld. The hypothesis was verified when archaeologists discovered that the tunnel vault was impregnated with pyrite, to represent the sky and the stars; In the final part, the ground is carved to symbolize a mountainous landscape and there were also the lakes of the underworld, there they used mercury in large quantities to simulate water. Historians and archaeologists intuited that it existed,It only remained to find it and there it was, under the one of Quetzalcóatl's pyramid. “They also stated that the entrance to the underworld should be to the east, and the richest part, full of abundance, of wealth of objects should be located to the west, we have corroborated it, it is precisely on the west side where one of the most important offerings was found. , with thousands of objects as narrated by written sources ”, says Gómez Chávez.
Snails, possibly from the Gulf of Mexico. INAH
The archaeologists had raised another hypothesis in which they assumed that at the end of the tunnel they would find the grave of a person, probably a ruler. The location of the tunnel below the Temple of the Feathered Serpent was indicative that they would find it there, but that did not happen. "We did not find it, not because it was not there, but because we have evidence that the Teotihuacanos themselves, at some point, took something very heavy," explains the archaeologist, "the truth is that we have enough elements to talk about the fact that in this tunnel , during several centuries, rituals of investiture of the governors were carried out, until they decide to close it; We will never know what it was they took out, but the idea remains that at the end of the tunnel it had functioned as a kind of funerary deposit and for some reason they extracted something,I believe, the urn that contained the remains of a person, we do not know. The unknown will remain forever ”.
Previous to the great Tenochtitlán, Teotihuacán is, above all, a mystery and the investigations on this jewel of archeology are just beginning. “The set of these objects will allow us to open various lines of research, since we have materials that were imported from as far away as Guatemala, where the jade that we have located in the tunnel comes from; cocoa, which surely also comes from the Mayan area; the amber, from Chiapas; We have remains of the skins of many felines such as jaguars, pumas, wolves, coyotes, animals that are not typical of this region of the highlands, but were brought from distant places, surely from the Chiapas jungle; we have mercury, rubber balls ... The quantity of objects and the variety are very significant for us ”, the archaeologist lists by heart,after 12 years of investigation in the underworld, an underground world, dark, cold and humid. But for Mesoamericans it was not only the place of death: it was also the place of creation, from where everything arises.
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