Archaeologists have unearthed a bouquet dating back 2,000 years to an ancient Mexican city.
About 2,000 years ago, the people of the ancient city of Teotihuacan put together a bunch of flowers, made posies, and placed them under flaming pieces. Now archaeologists have surprisingly discovered the remains of these two posies in a tunnel under one of the pyramids of this historic city, located northeast of Mexico City.
The pyramid near where they found the Bouquet is massive and, at the time of construction, was about 23 meters high. In this case, the pyramid was higher than the pyramid of the “Great Sphinx of Giza” in Egypt.
The Teotihuacan Pyramid is part of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.
Archaeologists have discovered these clusters at a depth of 18 meters in the deepest part of the tunnel. In addition to these posies, several pieces of pottery have been discovered along with the statue of “Quetzalcóatl,” the god of rain and fertility.
Sergio Gomez, an archaeologist at the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, believes the bouquets were part of a rain-related and fertility-related ritual held by locals in tunnels.
Archaeologists hope to find out more about the ritual by identifying the type of flowers in this Bouquet. It consists of 40 and 60 flower branches.
Archaeologists have also uncovered evidence of a large fire and several burnt pieces of wood at the site. It seems that people first put the posies on the ground and then covered them with a large amount of wood. The large volume of wood seems to have kept the Bouquet away from fire damage.
The tunnel that Gomez and his team were exploring was discovered in 2003 and has been the site of thousands of historical artifacts, including pottery, sculptures and animal remains. Archaeologists are still trying to figure out why the ancient people built the tunnel and how they used it.