Exploring a cave located beneath the Maya city of Chichén Itzá archaeologists discovered a sacrificial chamber, likely last visited by humans a thousand years ago
archaeologists discovered a sacrificial chamber, likely last visited by humans a thousand years ago.
According to Maya mythology, caves and sinkholes were the gates to the underworld Xibalba. This"place of fear”, as the name is roughly translated, was also an important source of freshwater for the Mayans, which dominated thefrom 2000 BCE to 1600 CE. The northern region of Yucatán is a seasonal desert, with a pronounced winter dry season. The heavy summer rains tend to dissolve the local limestone bedrock, forming karst caves.
In 1966 locals showed the entrance to a cave located beneath the Maya city of Chichén Itzá to the archaeologist Víctor Segovia Pinto. However, at the time he didn't explore the narrow passage and just sealed it off. Fifty years later a research team associated with theentered the Balamkú-Cave, exploring the underground system of passages and chambers.
In a chamber located at the end of a 1,300 feet long passage, the archaeologists discovered more than 155 artifacts. The artifacts, mostly ceremonial vessels showing deities associated with rain, figures of the holy jaguar or just tools of daily use, were apparently shattered during sacrificial rituals. Many are covered by a thick layer of carbonate, deposited here by the groundwater over many centuries.
During the mid-1990s, scholars began to propose that a consistently dry climate between 800 and 1000 CE causing extended drought and lack of water on the Yucatán Peninsula was the principal cause of thecenters. The archaeological discoveries in the Balamkú-Cave could fit into this scenario.
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