The approximately 3,000-year-old Mayan site of Aguada Fénix in Mexico is the oldest and largest monumental structure of the Maya. Archaeologists have now discovered that this ritual building is based on distinctive dates of the Mayan calendar. In the center of the platform they also discovered cross-shaped pits with ritual objects and the oldest known color symbols for cardinal directions in Central America. As a “cosmogram”, Aguada Fénix reflected the Mayan worldview in a unique way.
The Maya dominated large parts of Central America for more than 2,000 years. They built massive temple complexes, used complex astronomical and calendrical calculations, and constructed sophisticated systems to supply their cities with water. But the beginnings of this culture are still largely obscure. A find that archaeologists made in southeastern Mexico in 2020 was all the more significant. LIDAR surveys revealed a monumental Mayan platform more than 1.4 kilometers long and 15 meters high. Dating showed that the building, christened Aguada Fénix, was built around 1000 BC. This makes it the oldest Mayan monumental construction and one of the largest in all of Central America.
Aligned with cardinal points and Mayan calendar
Now there are new findings about Aguada Fénix. A team led by Takeshi Inomata from the University of Arizona in Tucson has uncovered more details of the structure through further LIDAR scans and excavations and received new clues about the function of the monumental building. The new data confirms that this Mayan building primarily served ritual purposes; however, there were no palaces or larger residential complexes there. Instead, Aguada Fénix may have been a cosmogram – an earthly reflection of the Mayan cosmological worldview.
This can be seen, on the one hand, in the orientation of the monumental platform: its central axis as well as several corridors and channels point to the place of sunrise on October 17th and February 24th – important key dates in the Mayan calendar. Because they are 130 days apart and thus mark the halfway point of the 260-day Mayan ritual calendar. “For the Maya, this cosmogram represented the order of the universe and time,” explains Inomata. The main axes of the complex form a cross that is roughly aligned with the main cardinal points. This can also be seen in several corridors, some of them kilometer long, which followed the main axes from the center of the platform. “These corridors could have been used for ritual processions, as was later practiced by the Maya,” the team said.
Cross pits with ritual objects and trend-setting pigments
The orientation and cross shape of the complex continues in the center of the monumental platform. There Inomata and his team discovered another nested cross structure. It consists of a deep, cross-shaped pit almost six meters long in a north-south direction and 5.60 meters long in an east-west direction. “On each of the four narrow sides there is a narrow entrance with steps through which people who performed rituals could enter the pit,” report the archaeologists. At the bottom of the cross pit they found 24 ritual axes dyed with red pigment, as well as several jade jewelry objects depicting a crocodile, a bird and possibly a woman giving birth. “This shows us that this really was an important ritual site,” Inomata says.
In the middle of the large cross pit there is another, smaller, cross-shaped depression, which apparently served as a central storage place for offerings. The team discovered small piles of different colored mineral pigments in it – different ones in each arm of the cross. “They placed the blue mineral pigment azurite in the northern arm, the green mineral malachite in the east and yellow pigment made from geothite-containing ocher in the south,” report Inomata and his colleagues. Mineral pigment was missing in the west, but this direction may have been marked by ephemeral organic colors. This is indicated by the remains of organic material at this point, as the archaeologists explain. In addition to the pigment clusters, they also found shells of various mussels, which could also have symbolized different directions.
“We know that among Mesoamerican peoples there are certain colors that are associated with certain directions,” Inomata explains. “But this is the earliest known evidence of directional color symbolism in Central America.” The archaeologists suspect that the Maya arranged these pigments and offerings in the cross pit as part of a ritual and then filled it with sand and earth. According to radiocarbon dating, this ritual depository dates from around 900 to 845 BC. However, some of the jade objects may have been left behind during later rituals.
Without a ruler and built from nothing
Together, these finds underline the great importance and ritual function of Aguada Fénix. According to archaeologists, this monumental building could have been one of the most important early ceremonial sites in the Maya area. At the same time, the new findings confirm that this facility did not grow up little by little, but was built almost from nothing. “We found that there was a kind of ‘big bang’ of building here around 3,000 years ago,” says Inomata. According to researchers’ estimates, the effort required to build this facility was enormous: 3.6 million cubic meters of building material were moved for the main plateau of Aguada Fénix alone. The workload was more than 10.8 million man-days. In addition, there were around 255,000 man-days for the canals and dams in the area around the central platform.
Nevertheless, there is no evidence of slaves, forced labor or a strict hierarchy at this Mayan site, as the archaeologists emphasize. In Aguada Fénix there was no king or powerful ruler who ordered his subjects to do this work. Instead, the early Maya seem to have built this monumental structure out of their own initiative and religious motives. “Most of them probably came voluntarily because the idea of building a cosmogram was important to them, so they worked on it together,” explains Inomata. However, there were probably spiritual and intellectual leaders who planned and designed the ritual complex according to astronomical specifications. “But these leaders had no power to force other people,” emphasizes the researcher.
Source: University of Arizona; Specialist article: Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2037