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.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“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 the order of time,” said Takeshi Inomata, Regents Professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study.The archaeological site was built during the beginnings of Maya civilization, which reached its height between AD 400 and 900, predominantly in modern-day Mexico and Guatemala. It was a time of development, with the construction of temples, roads, stone pyramids and other monuments, and developed complex systems of writing, mathematics and astronomy.“Before this site there’s no substantial construction. There’s really nothing archaeologically; they were not even using ceramics,” Inomata said.The ancient complex was discovered by LiDAR, a remote sensing technique. – Middle Usumacinta Archaeological ProjectThe team excavated several key places on the site, studied cores of soil and conducted an additional LiDAR, or Light De …
