A hidden passage to the underworld might have been revealed along with the enigmatic ancient civilization that constructed it.

In May 2020, archaeologists discovered a secret tunnel leading down a chamber deep below the Pyramid of the Moon. The pyramid serves as a massive temple in Teotihuacan, an old town located near Mexico City.

According to the National Geographic, the tunnel has remained buried underneath the towering structure, undisturbed for almost 2,000 years.

Hidden Passageways to the Underworld

The research group suggests that the chamber may have been used for funeral rites and that the passage may have represented the path to the afterlife - a traditional concept for the Aztecs, Maya, and other pre-Colombian communities.

Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) used a procedure called electrical resistance technology to map an image of the space lying underneath the pyramid with assistance from the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The UNAM plotted an illustration of the area without shattering any surface surrounding the architecture. The procedure led to the discovery of the hollowed-out chamber roughly 26 feet below the triangle, 49 feet in diameter, as well as the underground passageway.

Teotihuacá first settled as early as 400 B.C. and became the focal point of the world of ancient Mesoamericans in around 300 A.D. at a time when the greatest and most amazing architectures of the city were built including the Pyramid of the Moon, as reported by Heritage Daily.

However, the identities of the founders of Teotihuacán have not been discovered yet nor do researchers know why the civilization that resided there abruptly disappeared around 600 A.D.

In 750 A.D. however, the remaining citizens, who at some point numbered 200,000 quickly vanished, leaving behind their once-majestic capital along with its hallowed pyramids.

Originally, the Aztecs discovered the ruins of the city in the 1300s and gave it its name that means "the place where men become gods" in their native Nahuatl language. In the pre-Hispanic world, the temple was known as Meztli Itzácual in the start of the 17th century and has been the scene of multiple archaeological excavations.

Worshipping Water Gods

An archaeologist from the INAH, Verónica Ortega, had allocated her time in recent months to excavate the square that encompasses the Pyramid of the Moon. Ortega, after finding canals and cavities that resembled pools underneath the square that housed statues of gods of water, concluded that the whole of the city was built for the purpose of being a sanctuary to worship water.

According to History, Ortega told the Wall Street Journal that the true main character in Teotihuacán is water and that if there was any city in the ancient world that honored water, it was Teotihuacán.

The claim takes support from her previous excavations of two different pyramids, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Plumed Serpent, where she found further aquatic aspects such as seashells and pitchers.

There have been previous studies that discovered man-made tunnels under the three separate pyramids. The passageways were excavated with the aim of finding materials for construction and were later repurposed for astronomical observations and worshipping death in the underworld.

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