Another artifact from the Maya civilization was recently discovered. The item - a multicolored dish - featured the supernatural entity that the ancient Maya people believed in.
Ancient Maya Artifact Discovered in Mexico
During excavations at the Cansacbé archaeological site, researchers with the nation's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered the ceramic dish. It is about 7 miles from Campeche, a port city in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to a statement from INAH, the multicolored dish was unearthed in a male grave from the Late Classic era (600 to 900 A.D.) of Mesoamerican history.
The dish discovered at Cansacbé depicts a "wahyis," a guardian ghost or entity from Maya mythology. According to INAH, the object was intended as a memorial gift.
The researchers believed that the person buried with the dish may have been a member of the community's elite.
The relic was meticulously cleansed at a laboratory in Campeche after it was found. Even though the pictures have faded in some places, it is still possible to make out the image of a jaguar or a man wearing a jaguar pelt sitting on a bench. The image is framed by a series of tiny boxes that resemble turtle shells.
INAH Director General Diego Prieto Hernández said these images are typical of Late Classic Maya ceramics.
The Cansacbé site received little systematic investigation for most of the 20th century. Regrettably, in the first half of the 20th century, some of its mounds served as building materials for a highway connecting Campeche to Merida.
Then, in the 1990s, two palace-like structures' ruins were discovered during excavations for the highway's expansion.
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Maya Civilization
Native Americans from Mesoamerica, known as the Maya, live in nearly continuous areas in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. More than five million individuals spoke around 30 Mayan languages at the beginning of the 21st century. The majority of them were Spanish-bilingual.
The Maya civilization was one of the most advanced in the Western Hemisphere before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America. They engaged in agriculture, constructed enormous stone structures and temple pyramids, worked with gold and copper, and wrote in a kind of hieroglyphic that has now mostly been decoded.
The Maya were known for their spectacular architecture and art, as well as their sophisticated calendar, mathematics, and astrological system. They also devised the first completely developed writing system in pre-Columbian America.
The Maya civilization ruled over what is now southeast Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and the western regions of El Salvador and Honduras for more than 3,000 years up until Spanish colonization.
The recent discovery of an ancient ceramic dish was considered part of prospecting work on the Tren Maya Railway Project. This intercity railway, which would go approximately 1,000 miles across Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and through the center of the rich in antiquities ancient Maya civilization, is set to begin operations in December 2023.
The project is one of the most significant and divisive infrastructure projects in Mexican history. Its objective is to attract visitors from the region's well-known beach resorts to lesser-known inland locales, such as ancient Maya monuments, representing some of southern Mexico's most underdeveloped areas.
The project paved the way for discovering thousands of old Maya structures and artifacts. However, many claim it puts others at risk of harm or destruction, while some raise environmental concerns.
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