By: EFE Posted Jun 21, 2023, 1:36 pm EDT
Mexican archaeologists discovered an ancient Mayan city within the Balamkú ecological reserve, in Campeche, in the southeast of the countrywhich they named Ocomtún (“stone column” in Yucatec Mayan) due to the numerous stone columns scattered throughout the settlement.
The city includes large andpyramidal buildings, stone columns, three squares with buildings and other structures, with a core that covers more than 50 hectares and, according to the hypothesis, it was an important center of the Central Lowlands during the Classic period (250-1000 AD), the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reported in a statement.
The “stone column” received its name from the amount of cylindrical stone monoliths scattered all over the placesaid Slovenian-born archaeologist Ivan Ṡprajc, who is leading the investigation.
The finding, according to the INAH, was the result of the first field season of the project “Expanding the archaeological panorama of the Mayan Central Lowlands.”
“The initiative seeks to expand the knowledge of an extensive area practically unknown to archaeology,” the agency said in a statement available on Wednesday.
The discovery of this city was also made with the help of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping of the University of Houston, United States and its LiDAR technology, a recent and innovative technique for scanning the ground and finding hidden structures.
During May and June 2023, the dependency abounded, the team focused on the northern part of that area, that is, in the municipality of Calakmul, in Balamkú.
Ṡprajc said that thanks to the data collected by the LiDAR identified numerous concentrations of pre-Hispanic structures that share characteristics with what is known from other parts of the Maya area.
“The biggest surprise turned out to be the site located on a ‘peninsula’ of high ground, surrounded by extensive wetlands. Its monumental core covers more than 50 hectares and has various large buildings, including several pyramidal structures over 15 meters high,” said the archaeologist.
In addition, he said that the site served as an important center at the regional level, probably during the Classic period.
“The most common ceramic types that we collected on the surface and in some test pits are from the Late Classic (600-800 AD). Nevertheless, the analyzes of samples of this material will offer us more reliable data on the occupation sequences”, he added.
Regarding the cylindrical columns they found, the expert explained that “they must have been part of the entrances to the upper rooms of the buildings.”
The INAH added that it is about a rectangular acropolis, whose sides measure 80 meters and its height is about 10 metersand in its northern part there is a pyramid that rises 25 meters above the natural terrain.
The archaeologist said that Ocomtún suffered alterations in the Terminal Classic period (800-1000 AD) as a “reflection of ideological and population changes in times of crisis that, finally, by the 10th century, led to the collapse of the complex sociopolitical organization and the drastic Demographic Decrease in the Maya Central Lowlands.
The researcher said that they also found stairways, monolithic columns and the absence of monuments with inscriptions, which were possibly markets or spaces for community rituals.
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