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At its peak, the ancient city of Teotihuacán, in what we now call Mexico, had about 125,000 inhabitants, making it one of the busiest hubs in the world. 39, old world.
No one knows for sure where this thriving populace has gone, but the discovery of a secret tunnel and a chamber buried beneath the city's moon pyramid offers new clues as to how it's going. Ancient Mesoamerican culture may have perceived its final destination.
"These great complexes of offerings (rituals) constitute the sacred heart of the city of Teotihuacán", explains the archaeologist Verónica Ortega of the National Institute of Anthropology and History ( INAH) from Mexico.
"Everyone saw this as the mecca of civilization, which is why what we can find inside can help unravel the relationships that this ancient metropolis had with people." other regions of Mesoamerica. "
In an official announcement of the results evoked in 2017, researchers from INAH and the National Autonomous University of Mexico shed light on the recent and new discoveries of the pyramid of the moon, built in the third century of our era.
(Mauricio Marat / INAH)
Using an imaging technique called electrical resistivity tomography, which allows scientists to measure and map the underlying structures, the team detected a hidden chamber of 15 meters wide (50 feet), located about 8 meters below the surface.
It is not yet known with certainty what room was used for, but the researchers suggest that it could be a kind of funeral space, hosting sacred rituals.
In addition to the room, the team found a tunnel connecting the space to the Ancient City Moon Square – a possible passage to the "Underworld", in which the inhabitants of Teotihuacán were making offerings in accordance with their views on death and the afterlife.
Visualizations of resistivity under the pyramid of the moon (Institute of Geophysics / UNAM)
According to Ortega, previous archaeological explorations in the pyramid have uncovered tunnels containing skeletons and what could have been offerings – green stone objects, including necklaces and mosaics.
"So it's not difficult to think that something similar can be found in the basement," says Ortega.
If later archaeological excavations – which have not yet been confirmed – indicate that the tunnel and the passage serve as funerary rituals, this would suggest another function fulfilled by these massive pyramidal structures, which have been studied for hundreds of years. Years, but contain a lot of mysteries.
"The discovery would confirm that the inhabitants of Teotihuacán followed the same pattern in their great temples and that their function would be to imitate the underground world," Ortega said in July 2017.
