A study in Science Advances reported that LIDAR surveys, fieldwork, and excavations conducted between 2020 and 2024 uncovered a 3,000-year-old earth-and-pigment complex at the Maya site of Aguada Fénix in southeastern Mexico. The authors, led by Takeshi Inomata, Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, wrote that the layout followed solar movement and “is comparable to, or even greater than, those of later Mesoamerican cities.”
In 2020 Inomata’s group first spotted the earthworks from the air, and subsequent mapping revealed a nested cross measuring 9 km by 7.5 km centered on a raised rectangular plaza large enough for more than 1,000 people. The east-west axis aligned with the sunrise on 17 October and 24 February, dates separated by 130 days—half of the 260-day ritual calendar common across Mesoamerica.
“What we are finding is that there was a ‘big bang’ of construction at the beginning of 1,000 BCE, which really nobody knew about,” said Inomata, according to Discover Magazine. “Huge planning and construction really happened at the very beginning.”
Researchers described Aguada Fénix as the largest Maya site yet identified, with its main plateau stretching 1.4 km along its longest side and holding 3.6 million cubic meters of fill—larger than later centers such as Tikal and Teotihuacán, reported Live Science. Excavation of a cruciform pit at the heart of the plaza produced carved jade and greenstone crocodiles, birds, and what “may depict a woman giving birth,” all arranged to mirror the ground plan. Blue azurite marked the north, green malachite the east, yellow ochre the south, and a red shell the west.
“We never had actual pigment placed in this way. This is the first case that we’ve found those pigments associated with each specific direction,” said Inomata, according to Science Alert.
LIDAR scans showed causeways, canals, and a dam extending the cruciform concept into surrounding fields and forest. The authors estimated 10.8 million person-days to build the plateau and another 255,000 person-days for the hydraulic system, writing in Science Alert that the cosmogram “materializing the order of the Universe, likely provided a rationale for a large number of people to participate without coercive force.”
No palaces, royal sculptures, or other indicators of social hierarchy appeared at the site. “People have this idea that certain things happened in the past—that there were kings, and kings built the pyramids… But now we have a picture of the past that is different,” said Inomata, quoted by CNN en Español. Brown University archaeologist Andrew Scherer, who was not involved in the project, told the same outlet that despite the immense labor, “in no case is there a clear example of something built or manufactured to celebrate a ruler.”
Workers abandoned some canals, and the site appears to have been deserted around 700 BCE. “The sheer scale of the monument is mind-blowingly impressive,” stated Science Alert.
“The finding here is that a common theme in Mesoamerican societies—locating the world according to ritual directions and the colors associated with them—is explicitly embodied, and at an early date, in Aguada Fénix,” said Stephen Houston, Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, in an interview with CNN en Español.
David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin emailed Live Science that the study’s analysis was “very careful and meticulous,” though he noted that debate continues over whether the layout should be formally called a cosmogram.
“We don’t need really big social inequality to achieve important things,” said Inomata, according to Discover Magazine.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.