Few places on the planet are presupposed with such archaeological wealth without discovering as Latin America. Without going very far, an unprecedented fact occurred recently in Peru, when a group of researchers found in a municipal dump no less than A 5,000 -year -old mummy of antiquity. Something has happened in an area of Mexico. What intuited an accumulation of rotrefacta garbage has turned out to be an incalculable value treasure.
An unexpected finding. Yes, what at first seemed to be a simple garbage in a remote cave in the mountain area in Guerrero (Mexico) has ended up being one of the most surprising archaeological revelations of recent times.
The speleologist Katiya Pavlova, accompanied by the local guide Adrián Beltrán Dimas, explored in September 2023 Tlagoococ cave (Name that in Nahuatl means “Cueva de los Texas”) when, after crossing a narrow passage flooded with just fifteen centimeters between the roof and the surface of the water, they ran into fourteen objects carefully arranged around stalagmites. The scene, preserved in gloom and constant humidity for centuries, seemed to have stopped over time.
Fertility ritual. Among the objects found There were four shell bracelets, a huge decorated snail of Strombus genretwo complete stone discs, six discs fragments and a piece of carbonized wood. The arrangement of the bracelets, placed on small stalagmites of rounded way with possible galician connotations (Cover image), led archaeologists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) to interpret the whole as vestiges of pre -Hispanic fertility rituals.
As explained The archaeologist Miguel Pérez Negrete, in many Mesoamerican cultures the caves were considered sacred spaces, linked to the underworld and symbolically associated with the uterus of the earth, which reinforces the ritual hypothesis of the offering.
Venus and Quetzalcoatl symbols. Three of the bracelets present engravings with important pre -Columbian symbols. One of them is The Xonecuillia S -shaped figure associated with the planet Venus and the measurement of time. Another shows what, according to researchers, could be the representation of QuetzalcóatlCreator God in several Mesoamerican cultures.
Not just that. The indications allowed the objects in the Postclassic period (950–1521 dc), and attribute them tentatively to The Tlacotepehua culturea little documented civilization that inhabited the mountain region. As for the excellent state of conservation of the pieces, it is attributed to the stable climatic conditions within the cave, which has allowed, after more than five centuries of silencethey resurface in this way.
500 years hidden legacy. As we said at the beginning, it is a (other) surprising archaeological finding of hundreds of years ago. The Tlayócoc cave, located about 2,380 meters above sea level, is known among the premises for its water and bat guano, but so far there were no recent records of deep exploration.
Hence the finding of Pavlova and Beltrán can represent the first human incursion in that place in approximately five hundred years. After the discovery, both immediately contacted the INAH, who recovered the objects last March and will integrate them into their heritage For study and preservation. No doubt, an exciting finding that contrasts with the initial theory: a handful of fragments in the dark, confused with garbage, has revealed a forgotten fragment of indigenous spirituality, of ancestral cosmology and of material expressions of the sacred.
Image | Katiya Pavlova
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