Archaeologists have discovered a Mayan site with a large number of buildings in Mexico, covering an area of about 237 square kilometers and containing several thousand houses, municipal buildings, reservoirs, more than a thousand lime ovens and terraces. Researchers believe that this would have been a very prosperous area at the time.
The site is called Puuc, located in the hills of Northern Yucatán, Mexico, which was once a Mayan settlement. Puuc is also the site of one of the most important Mayan sites, Uxmal.
For this archaeology, scientists used LIDAR (laser radar) detection technology instead of manual excavation in order to map the remains in detail in a short time.
A densely populated area
A total of 7,900 residential houses, each with about two to three rooms, were detected in the area, as well as municipal facilities containing different types of buildings dating back to 600 to 750 AD.
The researchers found unique decorations on the municipal and religious buildings, such as mosaics on the walls, carved bands at the top of the pillars and numerous depictions of the Mayan rain god Chac.
The researchers noted that these details suggest that the Puc region may have been the most densely populated Maya settlement in the lowlands.
Although archaeologists have known since 1940 that there were four large Maya fortresses in the Puc region, it was not until 2017, with the help of laser scans, that researchers discovered more details of the fortresses, which date back to between 700 and 450 B.C.
The Mayan way of storing water
Since this area is limestone geology and has no rivers or lakes, how did the Maya solve their drinking water problem? In fact, the Mayan way of storing water is very similar to our modern day.
Researchers found that. They would build water tanks (Chultunes) and plaster the inside walls to collect rainwater; or build reservoirs (Aguadas) and lay channels to bring water in, some of these water collection channels can be hundreds of meters long.
Well-developed stone processing industry
Most of the buildings found here are of masonry construction. William Ringle, professor emeritus of anthropology at Davidson College in North Carolina, told Live Science, “This seems to have been a very prosperous area because of these masonry houses.”
Because of the need to build houses, the stone processing industry was quite developed. Researchers found quarries in the area, some so large that they took up most of the hill; another 1,232 round lime furnaces were also found. These furnaces heat sandstone to extract lime, one of the essential materials in mortar for construction.
They [lime furnaces] are everywhere,” says Ringer. It shows that in Puk, it’s a pretty big industry.”
These lime stoves are so efficient that they can keep working with very little firewood. People could find wood for the fires and stoves from close by, without using much forest resources. Lingle notes, “They didn’t burn the whole forest.”
Interestingly, the people of the time also used lime to process corn. Not only was corn a staple food for the Maya, in their mythology, the gods made the Maya out of corn, so they called themselves the Corn People.
That said, corn processing was a part of the Maya’s daily life. “When people were cooking corn, they would usually soak it in lime the night before to soften it a bit and then grind it up,” explains Lingle. “So for families, lime was also an essential commodity.”
Discovery of the region’s first terraces
In the entire region of Puc and even the northern Yucatan Peninsula (northern Yucatan), this is the first place where terraces were discovered. Although there are eight terraces in total, the number is somewhat small compared to the hundreds of hills. This suggests that terracing was not common in the area, the researchers said.
Researchers question a Mayan hypothesis
Thomas Garrison, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Texas, said the new study is “very comprehensive” in its understanding of the Maya in general and the specific customs of the region in Pook.
The Mayan civilization itself has many unanswered questions, one of which is the mysterious withdrawal of the Maya from the city. The highly developed Maya civilization existed for about 2,500 years, but unexpectedly, between the 8th and 9th centuries AD, the Maya suddenly abandoned their developed cities and moved deep into the barren mountains, and the Maya civilization of the classical period declined from then on. People have always wondered why the Mayans suddenly abandoned their cities. Scientists have many hypotheses about this, Garrison told Live Science, “The argument that mismanagement of the environment led to their demise doesn’t hold water here.” For this study, as well as previous ones, reveals that the Maya of the Puke region “managed their forest resources very carefully and their water resources carefully.”
Using lasers to detect underground sites
The laser detection technology used in this archaeological study involves strapping a LIDAR to a low-flying aircraft that emits billions of laser beams per minute to detect the ground, passing through surface vegetation and bouncing back when it hits a hard object, such as a rock or man-made structure. Computers compile the laser bounce times to create a 3D map of the buildings under the ground.
Using this technology, scientists can probe thousands of square kilometers of land at a time. Ringer said that through laser detection, their team has more information about Puk archaeology this time than they have collected in the past two decades.
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