Pre-Hispanic ruins discovered in the south of Mexico City

Archaeologists

from the National Institute of Anthropology and History found pre-Hispanic graves and ancient storage structures in a building located in the Álvaro Obregón district. The ruins date back more than 2,500 years .

In the La Otra Banda area, in a land that borders the San Rafael pantheon, specialists discovered an archaeological site that was occupied approximately 2,700 years ago , with cavities that correspond to 26 graves of the Middle Formative and Late Formative periods with depths of between 1.23 and 3.30 meters below street level , according to a press release.

Antonio Balcorta Yépez and Montserrat Alavez Ortúzar

, experts from the Archaeological Salvage Department of INAH , along with a group of workers, have been able to excavate the area in order to extract materials on different ground levels for their study.

"This way, we are able to preserve each context in its entirety. So far we have detected four occupational stages, four historical periods linked to the beginning of the 20th century , the Porfiriato , the Independent Mexico and the pre-Hispanic era ," stated Antonio Balcorta.

"We have had a series of findings that have revolutionized our knowledge of the graves of the Formative and Preclassic periods. The contexts suggest that we are facing a village where specialized activities were carried out .

"The height, as well as the strategic position of this site indicate that the people of this hill were able to assert greater control over certain resources, in comparison with the village of Copilco ."

Balcorta said that the discovery of pits is usually associated with housing spaces . Most pits had the function of containing waste materials or serve as storage sites for grains and artifacts as well as funerary crypts .

They also found a couple of graves with characteristics that "could indicate the performance of daily tasks carried out only by women. Such is the case of steam baths with herbs as part of the perinatal care because, among charcoal remains, we found a semicircle formed by boulders and basalts glued to the wall , which are broken or crashed by a constant exposure to fire ", explained the archaeologist.

The archaeologist Montserrat Alavez Ortúzar explained that another finding that supports the hypothesis that part of the area was used for pre and post-partum care, was the location of the burial offerings of a couple of children about one year of age.

On the ground, remains of ammunition were found from a battle fought in 1914 by carrancistas in the old paper mill , against zapatistas who were right on the southern bank of the Magdalena River , next to the San Rafael pantheon .

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