Archeology is very important for our society, since it allows us to learn more about ancient civilizations through ancient remains that contain valuable information. Thanks to archaeological studies, their way of life, their society, their economy, their political and religious organization, etc. can be reconstructed.
On this occasion, Researchers found a series of tunnels under a Catholic church in Mitla, an archaeological zone located in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mitla comes from the Nahuatl word, “Mictlán”, which is known as the underworld. It is estimated that during the pre-Hispanic era, Mitla reached a population of more than 10 thousand inhabitants.
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Thanks to the efforts of a group of archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the ARX Association for Archaeological Research and Exploration (ARX Project), this discovery was achieved.
When the team investigated several documents describing a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the ruins of a palace in Mitla, The experts used cutting-edge technology to not put the structures at risk, since There was no entrance because the missionaries sealed it because they believed it was “the entrance to the underworld.”
They used ground penetrating radar to detect underground objects through electromagnetic waves. They also used electrical resistivity tomography to evaluate the electrical properties of the subsoil and, finally, seismic noise refraction tomography to measure the propagation speed of artificial seismic waves.
By performing these tests, They found that there were a series of structures and that their entrance was under the main altar of the Catholic church.which agrees with the legend that these tunnels function as an entrance to the underworld.
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