Mexican archaeologists have unearthed an elaborately decorated human body from a grave that could be more than a thousand years old in an area where workers were completing construction of a major tourist railway project, the national antiquities institute INAH said on Monday.
The discovery occurred this month during archaeological salvage work carried out in conjunction with the construction of a multi-billion dollar tourist train in southern Mexico, designed largely to bring tourists to southern Mexico’s many ancient Mayan sites. as well as to nearby top beach resorts such as Cancun and Tulum.
The railway project, known as the Mayan Train, is a top economic development priority for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. There are teams of relatively well-funded archaeologists rushing to complete the excavations so that construction work is not delayed. Excavations elsewhere in the country have suffered budget cuts.
The latest burial discovery occurred during work on the construction of a hotel near the main Mayan ruins of Palenque in Chiapas state, once home to one of the largest and most advanced urban centers of ancient civilization.
The skeletal remains were found in a stone coffin about 2 kilometers from the city center, home to towering temples and a sprawling palace complex. They probably belong to an elite resident of the city known to the ancient Maya as Lakamha’.
The box also contained three ceramic vessels, ear torches and a pair of greenstone beads.
INAH also noted that the individual was buried face up, with his head pointing north, adding that further testicles are needed to determine the individual’s exact age and other characteristics.
Scholars credit the ancient Maya with great human achievements in art, architecture, astronomy and writing.
Palenque, like dozens of other ancient cities around southern Mexico and parts of Central America, flourished from about 300 to 900 AD.
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