Ceramics, human cemeteries and bullets from Spanish firearms are among the artifacts that have been discovered by archaeologists in Guatemala at the site of the last Mayan people of European conquest, officials said Friday.
The new excavation work began last June in an attempt to better understand the outpost of Tayasal, where the Mayan population first settled in 900 BC. C. in its Preclassic period, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation told AFP.
Tayasal was the last Mayan people to yield to Spanish conquest in 1697, a century after Europeans entered the western highlands of present-day Guatemala, Cordova said.
“More than a hundred years passed in which the northern part of Guatemala was completely outside Spanish rule, and this happened basically because the jungle functioned as a grassy border that made it very difficult for the Spanish to enter those places,” Cordova said. .
In 1525, Tayasal was also part of the course taken by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in his adventure to present-day Honduras.
Most of the buildings in the Tayasal are buried and planted in a seven-square-kilometer domain near Lake Petén Itzá.
Among the site’s partially exposed structures is a 30-meter-high acropolis that studies say served as the seat of the ruling elite.
Also visual is a water used since pre-Hispanic times.
One of the goals of the task is to showcase the Mayan archaeological value of the vast region so tourists can “appreciate” more, said Jenny Barrios of Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Sports.
The Mayan civilization reached its peak between 250 and 900 AD in what is now southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras.
In 2018, archaeologists used high-tech mapping to unearth a vast network of Mayan ruins hidden for centuries in Guatemala’s thick jungles, CBS News’ David Begnaud reported.
The landscape found that it included unknown villages in the past and more than 60,000 interconnected structures, adding houses, farms, roads and even pyramids. Scientists and archaeologists discovered the ancient ruins by firing lasers from an airplane to penetrate the dense jungle canopy.
Previous estimates estimated that only 1 or 2 million people lived in the Maya lowlands. But researchers now that up to 20 million people could have lived there.