The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced on Tuesday, May 31, the discovery of a carved head approximately 1,300 years old, representing one of the gods of corn among the Mayas. The find was made in the summer of 2021 under an alley of the palace of Palenque, an ancient Mayan city located in the state of Chiapas.
45 centimeters long, the head was associated with a basin and a deposit of various offerings: thus were found the remains of animals – quails, white turtles, fish, dogs -, shells, crustacean claws, carved bone fragments, ceramic pieces, three pieces of anthropomorphic figurines, one hundred and twenty obsidian arrowhead fragments, a portion of greenstone bead and two shell beads, as well as seeds and small conch shells.
For INAH archaeologist Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz, this discovery makes it possible to begin to understand “how the ancient Maya of Palenque constantly revived the myth of the birth, death and resurrection of the deity of corn”.
