“How could they have remained hidden for so long?” María de Lourdes asked López Camacho as she compiled the list of almost intact pieces: among others, vessels and figures of all sorts of animals, human likenesses, some barely sketched. “The pottery is similar to what was there when the Pyramid of the Sun was just being built, but we still don’t know if ours predated the founding of Teotihuacán as a city,” explains the archaeologist from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). and coordinator of the team responsible for bringing to light the ceramic remains in the second section of the Bosque de Chapultepec, which have made it possible to include the capital’s lungs among the oldest sites in the Mexican Basin. “Redefining one of our oldest atlases,” adds López.
The recent discovery, a layer of pre-Hispanic remains adjacent to the iconic Xochipilli Fountain and just a meter from the surface, which hundreds of people cross daily, has doubled the known temporality for this space, which experts previously dated at 1,500 years. “It’s surprising to imagine how many generations must have passed through here and how these testimonies remained hidden, just a meter below our feet, despite the changes in the environment,” says López, still amazed that the materials remained intact more than 3,000 years. As the expert points out, “although the area is surrounded by all the work of the Porfiriato, it has not affected its conservation. There is not even colonial or Mexican encroachment, cultures that would come later, just the concentration of these preclassic fragments.” These are the oldest finds found to date in the Bosque de Chapultepec, the capital’s main urban green space, which now thanks the recent discovery of INAH as an enclave of the preclassic period (1200-600 BC) ) .
This phase is marked by the fundamental changes that changed people’s customs and lives. “It’s the time when the groups stopped being hunters and started sowing,” says the researcher. It was in the Preclassic that populations adopted agriculture as their main livelihood, and villages were founded “forming more hierarchical civilizations that led to a division of labor,” says López.
Figures resembling those found in Preclassic (1200-600 BC) sites such as Copilco or Cuicuilco, also in Mexico City Mauricio Marat (INAH)
The development of social organization in this region would show ceramic art and cosmovision, cultural elements characteristic of the populations of the Mexican Basin. As the archaeologist puts it, “not having to chase after the animals to feed them and being able to sow their own forage allowed them to develop other skills and share the work.” Customs that experts will learn better through the objects emerging from the excavations recently discovered by the INAH team: arrowheads, whorls, ornaments, a deer bone awl, tiny steel points and cutting tools, flint, jadeite, slate and flint. “Not only is the abundance of minerals and stones we found amazing, but also the variety of colors. We could just classify the tracks by tone!” exclaims López.
According to the specialist, the entire pre-Hispanic treasury her team found earlier this year – currently under protection in the archaeological salvage section of the National Museum of History at Chapultepec Castle – is a relic. “From the classic statuettes of coyotes, bird heads to extremely rare animals resembling dinosaurs. What is most fascinating about the pre-classical figures is the heterogeneity of the faces, which represent the humanity of the time, without canons that impose beauty. The pre-classical figures invited me to reconsider my fellow species,” the anthropologist admits.
One of the pieces that caught his team’s attention is a miniature vessel that still contains traces of cinnabar, a mineral prized as a red pigment in Mesoamerica and used in pre-Hispanic burials. “It therefore strikes us as odd that the remains of the Bosque de Chapultepec are not directly associated with a burial ground, the common denominator of finds from this period. We have the hypothesis that it could be under the Cárcamo de Dolores”, says López, who laments the lack of budget for archaeological works, “very affected by the economic crisis”. “Our unit does not have direct resources to investigate, but we are using the impact that infrastructure work to be carried out in the area may have for work on mooring wells and excavations like this.”
A white bowl with a red geometric motif discovered at the Chapultepec archaeological site.INAH
The initiative he led, resulting from the declaration of the Bosque de Chapultepec as an archaeological zone, currently focuses on an approximate area of 38 by 24 meters, of which only 16% has been excavated. “It is very little and we still have a lot to discover. But what we have already found is priceless. Chapultepec Forest is still perceived only as a recreational or hiking park, very few people see it as an archaeological zone, and even mammoth bones have been found there. It’s a place that surprises us every day!” says the anthropologist, whose discovery has integrated the capital’s most famous park into the historical map that traces the formation of the Mexican Basin.
“El Bosque de Chapultepec is not only the most democratic point of the city, because from the humblest family to wealthy people who play sports and run who spend the day there, it is the common history of the citizens of Mexico. That is why it is so important that such finds are socialized, that people know their past and make it their own. Only by knowing our history better can we better interpret the world,” he concludes.
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