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About 500 years ago, someone placed a stalagmite shell bracelet in the Mexican cave. | Credit: Katia Pavlova
While investigating a cave high in the mountains of Mexico, Spelunker thought she had found a pile of modern waste garbage. But at a more careful check, she found that “garbage” was actually a cache of artifacts that may have been used in fertility rituals more than 500 years ago.
“I looked inside and it looked like the cave continued. He had to keep her breath and dip a little to pass,” said Sleleologist Katia Pavlova in a translated translated statementS “Then we found the two rings around the stalagmites.”
The cave, called Tlayócoc, is in the Mexican state of Guerrero and about 7,800 feet (2380 meters) above sea level. Importance “Yasovtsi Cave” in Nahuatl’s indigenous population, Tlayócoc is known locally as a source of water and guano bat. In September 2023, Pavlova and local leader Adrian Beltran Dimas embarked on the cave – probably the first time someone entered it for about five centuries.
Approximately 500 feet (150 m) in the cave ceiling is dipped down. A pair of researchers had to navigate the flooded cave with a gap of only 6 inches (15 centimeters) between the water and the cave ceiling. “Adrian was scared, but the water was deep enough and I went first to show him that it was not so difficult,” Pavlova said.
As they took a break to look around, Pavlova and Beltran were shocked when they found 14 artifacts.
“It was very exciting and incredible!” said Pavlova. “We were lucky here.”
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Archaeologists removed the bracelets from the stalagmites and cleaned them to reveal the design. | Credit: Miguel Perez
Among the artifacts were four shell bracelets, a giant decorated shell of snails (genus Bush), two full stone discs and six fragments of the disk and a piece of carbonized wood. Pavlova and Beltran immediately contacted the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, which sent archaeologists to restore the artifacts in March.
Given the arrangement of the bracelets – which were cycled on small, rounded stalagmites with “phallic connotations” – archaeologists speculated that rituals of fertility were performed in the statement.
“For pre -eaters, the caves were sacred places related to the underworld and considered the womb of the earth,” the archaeologist of Inach Archeologist Miguel Perez Negret He said in the statement.
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Three of the bracelets have incised decorations. The S-shaped symbol, known as “Xonecuilli”, is related to the planet Venus and the measurement of time, while the profile of a human figure can represent the creator God Ketzalkotl.
Perez meets the artifacts for the post -classical period of Meso -American history, between 950 and 1521 AD.
“It is very likely, since they were found in a nearby environment where the humidity is quite stable, the sites have been able to survive so many centuries,” Perez said.