Spotted from an airplane by remote sensing equipment, a vast and ancient Maya complex was hidden from view for millennia by forest and fields before it was made public in 2020. Five years on, archaeologists are spilling more of the monumental structure’s secrets.
The artificial plateau made from earth, with connecting causeways, canals and corridors, was built in southeastern Mexico 3,050 years ago and used for around 300 years. Called Aguada Fénix, it forms the oldest and largest architectural site in the area occupied by the ancient Maya civilization — bigger than later Mesoamerican cities such as Tikal and Teotihuacán although without their distinctive stone pyramids.
The design of the site was a representation of how the community conceived the universe, according to new research published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The site features crosses of increasing sizes with a cruciform pit containing precious ritual artifacts at its center.
“It’s like a model of the cosmos or universe. They thought that basically the universe is ordered based on this cruciform pattern, and then that’s tied to
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