Unique Mayan mask found in Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

By Patrick Pester - Staff Writer 4 hours ago

The mask has been reburied for its own protection.



The stucco mask of Ucanha being worked on by archaeologists
(Image: © INAH)

A giant Mayan mask as tall as a person has been revealed at an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatán.

The mask, which depicts the face of an unknown deity or elite person, was sculpted from the building material stucco and dates back to a period in Maya history known as the Late Preclassic (about 300 B.C. — A.D. 250), according to the news outlet Novedades Yucatán.

The discovery was made in 2017 at the archaeological site of Ucanha, near the modern-day city of Motul, and since then researchers with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have worked painstakingly to restore it.

Stucco masks like this one "represent the faces of individuals with particular features that can be associated with deities or with characters of prominent social status," INAH said in a statement.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/mayan-mask-sculpture-revealed.html?utm_source=notification

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[niyad]

1. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[Judi Lynn]

2. It's exciting every time a breakthrough into the past arrives, and our understanding changes again.

Every day is potentially a day the whole picture can shift massively!

A lot of historians are going to look fairly comical, in time, maybe.

Here's hoping there will be far more to discover which has not been torn apart by plunderers looking for ancient trinkets to sell.

The world needs the chance to understand what happened to the people who came earlier.